Shipmates,
I received this question on my Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen Facebook page and copied here to provide a comprehensive answer.
"I'm Fireman Garrett Holloman. I'm currently stationed at TRACEN Petaluma, ET A-school. I will be graduating here on April 15th and after my C-school I will be heading to LORSTA St. Paul. I am curious, if the budget calling for the closing of the LORANs gets approved, will they be closing immediately? If not, what is the timeline for the completion of closing them? Also, will they be totally shut down or will some of them be turned over to civilians? I believe that although they may be out dated, they are quite reliable if not more reliable then the GPS/DGPS that we are attempting to transfer over to. GPS may be more accurate when it works but what is the gurantee that it is going to work as long as the LORANs have been. I feel that they are a reliable and maybe even necessary part of what we do. Thank you for your time."
Fireman Holloman,
The President will propose in the Fiscal Year 2010 Budget that LORAN C be terminated the station shutdown. The budget must be approved by both the House and Senate and then signed into law by the President. We are developing plans as to how we will execute the tasking when it is approved by Congress. Accordingly, it is difficult at this point to provide timelines or to address the issue of a backup for GPS which is a separate and distinct issue. This decision will certainly force the discussion.
That said, I have been thinking about the LORAN C termination for several weeks now and would pass on these personal thoughts (again, independent of the future of a GPS backup)...
This transition is challenging, but necessary. We have struggled for some time to recapitalize our current LORAN C technology to move from 1970's era vacuum tube technology to solid state. Funding has been a continual challenge. During this time GPS has become the preferred and predominant navigation system in the maritime environment eclipsing the maritime requirements for Loran-C. Accordingly, the Fiscal Year 2010 Budget provides direction that we terminate LORAN C. The Department of Homeland Security has the responsibility and is leading an effort to reach out to various interagency and private sector stakeholders to determine if a national, systemic backup is required for GPS.
In many ways the proposed termination of LORAN C has been a flashback for me. In 1974 I was assigned as the Commanding Officer of LORAN C Station Lampang, Thailand. The Southeast Asia LORAN C chain supported military operations in Southeast Asia. Construction on this chain started in 1965 and ultimately included two stations in Vietnam (Tan My and Con Son) and three in Thailand (Sattahip, Udorn, and Lampang). In the spring of 1975 as the North Vietnamese advanced south we lost the Stations at Tan My then Con Son. The decision was ultimately made to disestablish the chain and I oversaw the shipping of electronics equipment and other parts back to the United States. In lieu of a change of command I transferred control of the station to the Thai Army.
Every dog has it day and LORAN C has had its day. However, its history is instructive as we go forward.
LORAN-C HISTORY
For those interested in a detailed history of how the Coast Guard acquired the LORAN mission I would recommend Louis Bragaw's MANAGING A FEDERAL AGENCY: THE HIDDEN STIMULUS (1980) ... although I'm not sure it is still in print. Bragaw devoted 3 chapters to a case study of we acquired the LORAN mission and how LORAN was ultimately chosen as the maritime navigation system of choice over its competitors at the time: LORAN A and OMEGA.
The Coast Guard was brought into the radio navigation mission through the confluence of unrelated events, the first being the assimilation of the U.S. Lighthouse Service in 1939 "The Advocacy of the LORAN C System" as a case study of the federal bureaucracy. In the opening paragraph he states "Since the early 1970s OMB and the Office of Telecommunications Policy in the Executive Office of the President had recognized that the combined cost of overlapping navigational systems was simply too high." The competing systems were LORAN A, LORAN C and Omega. As Bragaw points out the Department of Transportation was concerned with the Coast Guard's advocacy of LORAN C, based in part on its performance in Southeast Asia (we were proud of our performance!). He quoted a Department of Transportation official as saying, "its [Coast Guard] known advocacy of LORAN C required that an impartial evaluation of these radio aids should be completed by a non-DOT agency." As the discussion boiled down to a decision between LORAN C and Omega Bragaw commented "It would be a struggle to decide, because a decision would require the concurrence of the Department of Transportation, the Department of Defense, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congress. Many would be unhappy whether LORAN C or Omega was selected." We all know now that LORAN C became the standard.
Ultimately, the issue was decided when the FY 1975 Appropriations and Authorization bills were enacted. The Commandant at time, ADM Bender, testified at several hearings that year in support of construction funding for the LORAN C sytem to replace LORAN A. By then, the question had been reduced to replacing LORAN A with LORAN C in coastal approaches (termed the "coastal confluence zone"). In general, commercial fishermen opposed the transition due largely to the price of replacing LORAN A receivers with new LORAN C receivers. It should be noted that this dialogue took place in the context of several external events: the wreck and oil spill from the TORREY CANYON and the construction of the new Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
Faced with a "go-no go" decision to proceed, Clay Whitehead, the Director of the Office of Telecommunications Policy testified before Congress, "Although the system selections - Omega for high-seas navigation and LORAN-C for the coastal and rivers and harbors areas - are still being questioned by proponents of other systems, the time necessary to develop and evaluate alternative proposals would delay any system implementation for at least two years. Therefore, OTP supports the DOT proposal for LORAN-C expansion as primarily a civil maritime system for both coastal and rivers and harbors navigation." Congressional approval followed.
We are now at another choice point. LORAN C has served the Nation and global mariners well. The men and women who have stood the transmitter, timer, and engine room watches have done an exceptional job keeping the system running. However, it is time for change. It is time to understand that despite the passage of more than 30 years, one-sixth of today's Loran-C stations still operate equipment with vacuum tubes similar to those present at LORAN Station Lampang in 1975. This cannot be sustained indefinitely. It is time to choose between living in the past and operating in the future.
We will take care of our people. We will conduct this transition with the same sense of responsibility and stewardship as we did in 1975 at LORAN Station Lampang. The Loran-C system was not designed to be and is not a systemic backup for the positioning, navigation, and timing provided by GPS. A decision on eLORAN will be made independently.
I received this question on my Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen Facebook page and copied here to provide a comprehensive answer.
"I'm Fireman Garrett Holloman. I'm currently stationed at TRACEN Petaluma, ET A-school. I will be graduating here on April 15th and after my C-school I will be heading to LORSTA St. Paul. I am curious, if the budget calling for the closing of the LORANs gets approved, will they be closing immediately? If not, what is the timeline for the completion of closing them? Also, will they be totally shut down or will some of them be turned over to civilians? I believe that although they may be out dated, they are quite reliable if not more reliable then the GPS/DGPS that we are attempting to transfer over to. GPS may be more accurate when it works but what is the gurantee that it is going to work as long as the LORANs have been. I feel that they are a reliable and maybe even necessary part of what we do. Thank you for your time."
Fireman Holloman,
The President will propose in the Fiscal Year 2010 Budget that LORAN C be terminated the station shutdown. The budget must be approved by both the House and Senate and then signed into law by the President. We are developing plans as to how we will execute the tasking when it is approved by Congress. Accordingly, it is difficult at this point to provide timelines or to address the issue of a backup for GPS which is a separate and distinct issue. This decision will certainly force the discussion.
That said, I have been thinking about the LORAN C termination for several weeks now and would pass on these personal thoughts (again, independent of the future of a GPS backup)...
This transition is challenging, but necessary. We have struggled for some time to recapitalize our current LORAN C technology to move from 1970's era vacuum tube technology to solid state. Funding has been a continual challenge. During this time GPS has become the preferred and predominant navigation system in the maritime environment eclipsing the maritime requirements for Loran-C. Accordingly, the Fiscal Year 2010 Budget provides direction that we terminate LORAN C. The Department of Homeland Security has the responsibility and is leading an effort to reach out to various interagency and private sector stakeholders to determine if a national, systemic backup is required for GPS.
In many ways the proposed termination of LORAN C has been a flashback for me. In 1974 I was assigned as the Commanding Officer of LORAN C Station Lampang, Thailand. The Southeast Asia LORAN C chain supported military operations in Southeast Asia. Construction on this chain started in 1965 and ultimately included two stations in Vietnam (Tan My and Con Son) and three in Thailand (Sattahip, Udorn, and Lampang). In the spring of 1975 as the North Vietnamese advanced south we lost the Stations at Tan My then Con Son. The decision was ultimately made to disestablish the chain and I oversaw the shipping of electronics equipment and other parts back to the United States. In lieu of a change of command I transferred control of the station to the Thai Army.
Every dog has it day and LORAN C has had its day. However, its history is instructive as we go forward.
LORAN-C HISTORY
For those interested in a detailed history of how the Coast Guard acquired the LORAN mission I would recommend Louis Bragaw's MANAGING A FEDERAL AGENCY: THE HIDDEN STIMULUS (1980) ... although I'm not sure it is still in print. Bragaw devoted 3 chapters to a case study of we acquired the LORAN mission and how LORAN was ultimately chosen as the maritime navigation system of choice over its competitors at the time: LORAN A and OMEGA.
The Coast Guard was brought into the radio navigation mission through the confluence of unrelated events, the first being the assimilation of the U.S. Lighthouse Service in 1939 "The Advocacy of the LORAN C System" as a case study of the federal bureaucracy. In the opening paragraph he states "Since the early 1970s OMB and the Office of Telecommunications Policy in the Executive Office of the President had recognized that the combined cost of overlapping navigational systems was simply too high." The competing systems were LORAN A, LORAN C and Omega. As Bragaw points out the Department of Transportation was concerned with the Coast Guard's advocacy of LORAN C, based in part on its performance in Southeast Asia (we were proud of our performance!). He quoted a Department of Transportation official as saying, "its [Coast Guard] known advocacy of LORAN C required that an impartial evaluation of these radio aids should be completed by a non-DOT agency." As the discussion boiled down to a decision between LORAN C and Omega Bragaw commented "It would be a struggle to decide, because a decision would require the concurrence of the Department of Transportation, the Department of Defense, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congress. Many would be unhappy whether LORAN C or Omega was selected." We all know now that LORAN C became the standard.
Ultimately, the issue was decided when the FY 1975 Appropriations and Authorization bills were enacted. The Commandant at time, ADM Bender, testified at several hearings that year in support of construction funding for the LORAN C sytem to replace LORAN A. By then, the question had been reduced to replacing LORAN A with LORAN C in coastal approaches (termed the "coastal confluence zone"). In general, commercial fishermen opposed the transition due largely to the price of replacing LORAN A receivers with new LORAN C receivers. It should be noted that this dialogue took place in the context of several external events: the wreck and oil spill from the TORREY CANYON and the construction of the new Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
Faced with a "go-no go" decision to proceed, Clay Whitehead, the Director of the Office of Telecommunications Policy testified before Congress, "Although the system selections - Omega for high-seas navigation and LORAN-C for the coastal and rivers and harbors areas - are still being questioned by proponents of other systems, the time necessary to develop and evaluate alternative proposals would delay any system implementation for at least two years. Therefore, OTP supports the DOT proposal for LORAN-C expansion as primarily a civil maritime system for both coastal and rivers and harbors navigation." Congressional approval followed.
We are now at another choice point. LORAN C has served the Nation and global mariners well. The men and women who have stood the transmitter, timer, and engine room watches have done an exceptional job keeping the system running. However, it is time for change. It is time to understand that despite the passage of more than 30 years, one-sixth of today's Loran-C stations still operate equipment with vacuum tubes similar to those present at LORAN Station Lampang in 1975. This cannot be sustained indefinitely. It is time to choose between living in the past and operating in the future.
We will take care of our people. We will conduct this transition with the same sense of responsibility and stewardship as we did in 1975 at LORAN Station Lampang. The Loran-C system was not designed to be and is not a systemic backup for the positioning, navigation, and timing provided by GPS. A decision on eLORAN will be made independently.
ADM A
