eLoran: Articles and Blogs

6/12/2009 - Important Policy Decisions

LORAN-C: Rejects termination of LORAN-C and denies the authority to sell existing LORAN-C sites, as proposed by the President.

5/13/2009 - During a Senate hearing on the President's Fiscal Year 2010 budget, Senator Susan Collins, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, questioned the proposal to eliminate funding for the Long Range Aids to Navigation, or LORAN, program.

"It's ironic that this alarming report by the GAO was released the same day that the administration's budget was released, which calls for the elimination of the LORAN-C, which is the network foundation for eLORAN, the leading proposed backup for GPS," said Senator Collins during the hearing.

5/13/2009 - "The Coast Guard has also proposed to terminate operation of the LORAN-C system, which provides positioning information to commercial, recreational and government aircraft and vessels. I am extremely concerned this decision will leave us without any backup to the Global Positioning System. Has the federal government determined that no supplemental navigation system is necessary? What happens if GPS becomes temporarily or permanently unavailable?

May 12, 2009

Withheld from the public for two years, since its completion in March 2007, the Independent Assessment Team (IAT) report has been let out of detention, just in time to counter recent efforts by the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Coast Guard to throttle the program. The IAT "unanimously recommends that the U.S. government complete the eLoran upgrade and commit to eLoran as the national backup to GPS for 20 years."

By Bob Brewin, 5/12/2009

Congress and the geospatial industry are voicing opposition to President Obama's proposal to kill a decades-old navigational system that could serve as a backup to the popular and prevalent GPS.

Windham, ME - May, 2009 - The recently released Independent Assessment Team (IAT) report, chaired by Dr. Bradford Parkinson, the father of GPS, and other industry leaders, concludes "... the IAT unanimously recommends that the U.S. Government complete the eLoran upgrade and commit to eLoran as the national backup to GPS for 20 years." The IAT reached this conclusion by evaluating the need for a GPS backup then evaluating all available or potential alternatives. The IAT also performed a "deep dive" on the costs of the Loran system and a transition to eLoran, and found the infrastructure enhancements to eLoran are 70% complete and the cost to complete the rollout is less expensive than decommissioning the Loran system. This report is in direct opposition to recent comments made by the Department of Homeland Security that terminating Loran will save $190 M over five years and more research is needed to evaluate the need and solution for a GPS backup. 

BY BOB BREWIN 05/11/2009
The same day the that the Obama administration confirmed it planned to cancel a GPS backup system, the Government Accountability Office issued a report warning that delays in launching new satellites could imperil the performance of the navigational system.

Nov 3, 2009

Dear Secretary Napolitano:

The Fiscal Year 2010 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act that the President signed into law last week allows you to make a certification "that the LORAN-C system infrastructure is not needed as a backup to the Global Positioning System (GPS) or to meet any other Federal navigation requirement" and to then terminate the LORAN program.

When I was writing my piece about Loran last month, it became obvious that I needed some guidance. In fact, that piece concludes with this: ‘I'm just really curious about why Loran seems to be so "Off again, on again, gone again."'

So I contacted some high level navigation people I know at the Coast Guard, and they put me in touch with Commander Bob Feigenblatt of the eNavigation Branch.

I shared my posting with him, and he drafted a response for me. Unfortunately, that response had to be reviewed and cleared before it could be released, so it wasn't available by the time MadMariner went to press with that item. View BLOG

Contradictory News Swirls Around the Old Technology. What's the Story?

April 29, 2009  Are you confused? I'm confused. First I hear they're going to shut down the old Loran system. Then I hear they've going to update it into a robust alternative and backup to GPS. But then I read they're going to shut it down after all.  View BLOG