US Gov`t killed our Loran navigation GPS backup
Like many aircraft operators I removed the King Loran reciever from my plane to make room for the ADS-B installation. I am thinking the decision to shut down the Loran system was pretty lame. The auto pilot in my aircraft quit working in flight when the system was shut down .The autopilot was coupled to the Loran receiver. More than 200,000 US civilian and military aircraft and boats had Loran receivers… Consider that a single F-22 costs $350 million including developmental and other costs and for the price of of one aircraft, we could have operated the entire LORAN-C system for more than four years. But the Department of Homeland Security ordered the Coast Guard to shut down and demo the LORAN stations back in February 8, 2010 .
So what? Doesn’t the Global Positioning System (GPS) do the same thing and better? It guides unmanned aerial vehicles, tells troops and their supporting arms exactly where they are, synchronizes time and cell-phone antenna, navigates ships. Sure it does, until it fails, or an enemy disables it. Then what do we do? A good answer was to keep a backup LORAN system, and even upgrade it to the enhanced version, e LORAN, which was planned and other countries keep in operation…
Many think that disabling the satellite system that powers the GPS is unlikely because terrorists won’t be blowing a satellite out of the sky.This maybe true, but it’s relatively easy to cripple the GPS without shooting down a satellite because a space system has two other vital segments – the low power up-and-down links and the ground station. The links can be neutralized by electronic assault. North Korea has done this. The ground station is vulnerable to a variety of stoppages, including mundane factors like power outages and even simple human error. The solution of course is to have a backup system in order to prevent the chaos of a disabled GPS – a chaos that could cause a crash of our financial system – a problem that would make the annual $36 million cost of operating LORAN look like peanuts.
Another dollar comparison is in order. The estimated cost to upgrade LORAN-C to LORAN e , which could operate for at least 20 years,was $150 million. The projected cost of eight new GPS satellites is $1.8 billion, in addition to launch and operational costs.
If this minor cost of continuing the LORAN system seems to be a no-brainier, then what happened? Lawrence Husick explains a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Center on Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, wrote that the LORAN system “lacked powerful contractors and lobbyist who could profit from Lorans operation and congressional sponsors.These remote radio installations that bring few jobs, and dollars had no support.” In short, he says, “Loran is an orphan.” There is no money to be made by defense contractors. The Coast Guard maintained the system as part of its job description. He adds that February 8, 2010 marked the day the Department of Homeland Security put the entire nation at risk despite the protest from pilots to the FAA.
Conclusion: “It is easy to see how a small system like Loran just got lost in the shuffle of bean-counters trying to cut corners.” The conclusion: We were penny wise and pound foolish. We could spend a few pennies to prevent a navigation melt down one day and it may be coming soon. George Gould pilot @ Galceston Scholes airport KGLS Galveston Texas