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Navigating Better Over North Pole

Dec 24, 2019

navigating over the polies — 031000-N-XXXXB-001 Arctic Circle (Oct. 2003) -- Three Polar bears approach the starboard bow of the Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine USS Honolulu (SSN 718) while surfaced 280 miles from the North Pole. Sighted by a lookout from the bridge (sail) of the submarine, the bears investigated the boat for almost 2 hours before leaving. Commanded by Cmdr. Charles Harris, USS Honolulu while conducting otherwise classified operations in the Arctic, collected scientific data and water samples for U.S. and Canadian Universities as part of an agreement with the Artic Submarine Laboratory (ASL) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). USS Honolulu is the 24th Los Angeles-class submarine, and the first original design in her class to visit the North Pole region. Honolulu is as assigned to Commander Submarine Pacific, Submarine Squadron Three, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. U. S. Navy photo by Chief Yeoman Alphonso Braggs. (RELEASED)

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Blackout zones are small regions near the magnetic poles where compasses become unreliable and information is vague. A new feature included in an updated mapping model will provide the navigational data needed to correct for the difference between the Earth’s geographic and magnetic poles.

The updated 2020 World Magnetic Model (WMM) is a combined effort of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Geological Survey.

Military planes, ships, submarines and GPS units rely on the model for accurate navigation. The WMM is the standard model used by DoD, NATO, and IHO for a wide range of positional and navigation systems.

Mike Paniccia, the NGA’s program manager for the World Magnetic Model, said: “If you’re flying an airplane over the north pole, you need to know where you can trust your compass and where you can’t.”

The new model automatically loads blackout zone information into navigational systems and includes buffer zones to let travelers know when the reliability of compasses degrades approaching these blackout zones.

According to c4isrnet.com, updated models are published every five years to account for the constant shifting of the Earth’s magnetic poles — about 50 km a year according to Paniccia — but last year the NGA had to issue an out-of-cycle update to correct for an unexpectedly larger change. Paniccia said that was likely a one-time event.

The NGA is looking to procure a new data collection tool to build the World Magnetic Model upon.

“For the 2030 release we’re going to need something new,” he said. “And so NGA and DoD is almost certainly going to do a procurement of something. We don’t know what that something is, but it’s worth saying that we are going to invest in a new data collection system.”