The minesweeper USS Guardian went aground on Jan. 17 on Tubbataha Reef in the Sulu Sea while en route from Subic Bay in the Philippines to Indonesia. The damage is so severe that the vessel will have to be broken up reports Defense News. Now how does a warship run aground in the age of GPS? Simple, the Navy’s digital map was wrong (!):
The U.S. Navy also revealed Jan. 18 that the digital navigational chart in use by the Guardian misplaced the correct location of the reef by about eight nautical miles. The Navy and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, producer of the digital charts, reviewed more then 3,700 digital charts and, in addition to the Tubbataha Reef error, found another mistake off the coast of Chile. Both errors have since been corrected, and the Navy’s chief navigation official has declared his confidence in the accuracy of the digital charts.
