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And
leading he is, faster than expected. The concept of a paperless Navy is
now an accepted policy, with full implementation planned for 2004. Captains
will have some leeway in when they actually dispense with paper backup,
but West has strong arguments about why they should. He believes that
traditional navigation techniques will only give a false sense of security
as users become more accustomed to the power of full electronic charting.
Pulling out a roll of unfamiliar paper charts when the going gets rough
is just not going to cut it. Of course, “when the going gets rough”
is considerably more complex for a fleet navigator in warfare than for
any of us recreational boaters.
Behind
West’s full embrace of digital charting is a determination to make
it absolutely reliable and incredibly powerful. The Navy is conducting
its own charting software and hardware-development program and making
public unclassified portions of it at www.navigator.navy.mil.
The basics are familiar to anyone who has used PC charting programs, but
beyond the basics—well, wow. Picture hardened, server-size computers
connected by fiber optics, dual-frequency military GPS backed up by inertial
systems, any and every sort of data overlaid on charts—and that’s
just the unclassified part.
Meanwhile,
NIMA is putting together a seamless worldwide database of vector charts.
Steve Hall, associate director of the agency’s Maritime Safety Information
Division, says, “Admiral West is an out-of-the-box forward thinker.
He’s leading the Navy into the digital age, and we’re going
to help him.” The database, known as the Digital Nautical Chart
(DNC), is rich in layers and detail and has been a massive undertaking,
involving the conversion of paper and electronic data from the hydrographic
offices of many nations and the development of systems to keep it updated
efficiently and quickly.
If you
go to www.nima.mil and look around the
Maritime Safety pages, you’ll find information about the DNC and
much more. Hall and NIMA also deserve credit for forward thinking; they’ve
actually been providing valuable navigation information online to the
public since 1983, first by bulletin board, then by the Web. Today on
their site you’ll find everything from Great Circle calculators
to piracy reports to a downloadable version of Bowditch, all for free.
There has even been talk that NIMA might distribute the DNC as open data
for the benefit of all mariners, but that’s unlikely due to copyright
issues.
No matter,
all this development will benefit recreational boaters in due time. There
is always a technological trickledown; remember where GPS came from in
the first place. Some Third World hydrographic offices are now better
able to provide vector chart data after working with NIMA. Somewhere being
tested in secret is some nifty navigation tool that we will get our mitts
on eventually. Perhaps more important is the leadership that men like
West and Hall are providing. Like Nathaniel Bowditch, these are true American
practical navigators, skilled in the traditions but open to new technologies.
There’s much to be learned from all these men and much to be proud
of.
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