I’ve joked, over the years, about how my native North Dakota is a maritime state, peopled by folks with salt water in their veins. It’s partly a joke, of course – NoDak is pretty land-locked. Not entirely a joke, of course; many of us are descended from the Vikings (not the ones that choke in the playoffs – the ones that made all your anscestors cry “uncle”).
But at least partly because North Dakota had a Coast Guard base.
For the past forty-odd years, thirteen of the loneliest coasties in the entire service have manned a LORAN transmitter near the little town of Lamoure. The station broadcast a continuous signal with about four megawatts of power (most of our metro TV stations and bigger FM stations are 100,000 watts) to ships and planes around the world; in the days before GPS, it was the gold standard of electronic navigation.
Was. The system was officially shut down this past Monday:
On Monday at 2000 GMT, the U.S. Coast Guard terminated the transmission of the LORAN-C radionavigation signal, marking the end of a system which has been an important factor in maritime navigation (and, to a lesser extent, air navigation) for more than half a century. The termination of LORAN was based on budget considerations and on the conclusion that LORAN’s functions have been supplanted by GPS. I’m not totally sure that this was a good decision.
LORAN was developed in World War II, and has served well. But time and technology march on. But progress doesn’t always progress, really:
Most LORAN users have now converted to GPS: however, there are signficant concerns about the increasing level of navigational dependency on this satellite-based system. For one thing, GPS signals are necessarily weak and can be jammed relatively easily. This was much less of a threat for LORAN because of the very high power (up to 4 megawatts) of its terrestrial transmitters.
So powerful, in fact, that they’d kill birds in flight near the towers.
Various proposals have been advanced for GPS backup systems, one of which involves radio signals transmitted from blimps. An alternative that was on the table was e-LORAN, involving the upgrade of the system’s accuracy to about 8 meters: indeed, significant money has already been invested in e-LORAN development. I’ve seen estimates that the cost of completing e-LORAN deployment would have been about $250MM, which is roughly the same amount of money being spent to dismantle the existing LORAN infrastructure. (LORAN operating costs were quite reasonable, about $35MM/yr.) I wouldn’t be surprised if whatever we wind up doing for GPS backup turns out to cost a lot more.
Of course, GPS developers have a lot more political clout than LORAN technicians, these days.
Anyway – bon voyage, LORAN!
This was a monumentally dumb decision.
GPS is a very fragile system, can be jammed with inexpensive jammers, and multiple nations have anti-satellite capability with more on the way.
Farewell, 1940’s…. _… _.__ . _… _.__ .
Let’s give the Feds some credit for killing a system that had been replaced with a new technology. At least we’re not the British…
“The British created a civil-service job in 1803 calling for a man to stand on the Cliffs of Dover with a spyglass. He was supposed to ring a bell if he saw Napoleon coming. The job was abolished in 1945.”
As my only source for all that is NoDak Mitch, where did those Coasties go on Shore Leave to get their di, er, find companionship?
“replaced with a new technology.”
that has no backup. eLoran is new technology, high powered, and located entirely within the U.S. And dirt cheap.
This is stupidity, and I’m guessing driven by somebody’s effort to acquire some prime coastal real estate.
I am tired of reading comments that claim Loran is ready for the pasture. I’m sure most of the posts I read don’t really understand the whole picture. See http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0215/1224264468635.html there is a real threat to the America’s security. How about losing your cell phone or internet. Even GPS followers say we should keep Loran and upgrade to eLoran along with communication companies. There are unmanned Loran sites now why not do that and save some of that 36 million. How about areas where GPS signal is week or disrupted? These two systems complement each other. The ordinary person might not feel the effects of shutting down Loran now, but don’t be surprised going forward when you do.