[arter4]

>As The American Practical Navigator (aka “Bowditch”) states, “No navigator should ever become completely dependent on electronic methods. The navigator who regularly navigates by blindly pushing buttons and reading the coordinates from ‘black boxes’ will not be prepared to use basic principles to improvise solutions in an emergency.”

I wonder if this mindset is also applied, for example, to the rest of the military. Does the Army regularly practice land navigation? I know they get at least one landnav class, but it is a perishable skill. If you don't practice, you'll soon forget about it.

I guess this could also be useful to civilians. Being able to do stuff without relying too much on electronics.

[nradov]

Some Army units, particularly ground combat units, regularly practice land navigation with map and compass. I don't think they typically spend much time on celestial navigation beyond the basics of finding heading based on constellations. They're not usually carrying sextants.

[i_am_proteus]

There's no real need for celestial navigation on land, the same way there's no need for celestial navigation in most coastal waters: if you can see lines of bearing to known landmarks/navigation markers, you can obtain a fix.

[lupire]

Ships are far more isolated than land crews, and direction-finding is much harder at sea than on land. If you're part of an organization that cares where you are and wants you back, you are pretty easy to find your general location venture off on a land journey and get stuck. A single human might be hard to find under a rock or snow, but an army unit that wants to fund is easy to spot.

[paganel]

The problem with getting lost as an army unit on land is that you might inadvertently get in your enemy's sights before anyone on your side might have had the chance to find you, and at that moment it is game over for said unit. There have been documented a few of these such cases in the war in Ukraine.