I am a firm believer in the use of technology to aid soldiers, but I think that your account, MOOXE, is a little too breathless on the capabilities and limitations of the PLGR/DAGR or any GPS receiver.
To imply that they will replace the map and compass (as a primary means of navigation) is not also heretical, but downright foolish. To rely that much on something powered by batteries and silicon chips is foolhardy and/or negligent, which you state using a civilian GPS would be due to spoofing. I would say placing the amount of faith that you do in any GPS receiver (whether it is civvy or secret squirrel) is borderline insane. Don't get me wrong: I fully believe in using them, and given the choice between carrying a GPS and carrying sniv kit, I would go with the GPS, for the reasons you gave (accuracy, ease of use, which the old PLGR didn't exactly fulfill). Saying that a map and compass will be relegated to backup status will cause people to use the GPS as the crutch that it has wrongly been blamed for in the past, and make those that rely strictly on GPS more susceptible to cases of where people will have
willfully placed men and women in danger because you ignored what is right
.
There are many factors that can cause a GPS receiver to present the wrong information to the user, and spoofing is only one of the myriad ways. Environmental effects, atmospheric conditions, electrical/mechanical issues. Something as simple as having the antenna covered and not noticing the "MSF" warning (that the old PLGR gave, not sure what the DAGR has... stands for Minutes Since Fix, or when the last "good" signal was received) can cause a grid to be off by huge amounts, and if the user is poorly trained (as I was, once upon a time) a wrong grid will be plotted. It is up to the user to determine if the data presented by the GPS unit is accurate, and go from there. Use it if it appears to be accurate, bin it if it is out to lunch. And without the map (and/or compass) skills that a soldier should have, determining what is good or bad is impossible.
As an aside, a GPS without a map (whether it is old school paper or a hi-tech map embedded in a GPS) is pretty much useless, as it only tells you on earth where you are, based on radio signals. You NEED a map to plot yourself according to the grid/coordinates that the fancy-dancy machinery that the CF (or electronics store) provided you with. And your logic of
Are you using your cellphone to call in grids of friendly positions? Well if you think that is bad, then by this same reasoning a civilian GPS is bad.
is unsound: too many people think that, due to all the fancy gear that we have now, there is no requirement to use good voice procedure (using reference points or veiled speech rather than using plain speech to give friendly positions). That is based on the assumption that "they" don't have the technology to crack our technology (remember the Germans and their "impenetrable" codes???) or use captured equipment to monitor our comms. A civilian GPS that
might be spoofed is no more or no less dangerous (and I would argue far less dangerous in most cases) than someone who insists on sending friendly information in clear under the misguided notion that our "secure" comms
won't be monitored or breeched by "them".
Allan
Poorly trained user of PLGR and civvy GPS's since '96