Vehicular Land Navigation System C1

[Lang]

It appears that the system was not widely used as it was very inaccurate in use and required a high level of skill and practice to use well.

Three things killed further development:

OMEGA the VLF signals developed for underwater use by submarines and subsequently available for aircraft and vehicles, both military and civil (70's and 80's). This required a start from a known point and used crossing radio waves from about 4 stations around the world (like ripples in a pond from 3 different stones thrown in a distance apart).

This of course was subject to electronic warfare interference.

Inertial Navigation was sort of a development of the NAVAID system but here it used very sophisticated gyros which measured movement also from a known point. Very accurate - down to a couple of metres. It was fully self contained in the vehicle or aircraft and not subject to outside interference. Used by all airliners and military aircraft and vehicles for 30 years. Aircraft have now gone to GPS but the military have retained inertial capability because GPS is subject to electronic interference.

GPS needs no introduction. It is so universal that attacking GPS satellites or creating spurious signals other than in a small local area is as counterproductive to the attacker as the defender. Everything uses it. It would appear that GPS will be treated like gas warfare - everybody has the capability to do bad things with it but by mutual agreement it is off-limits.

Although they have their own system, turning off US satellites over Russia in a conflict, or programming them not to talk to certain receivers, so the Russians can not use them will not happen because the Russians have the capability to knock down the satellites. Everybody loses. GPS has just become a modern version of the earth's magnetic field available to everyone.