National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency personnel left the office behind for a day and gained a unique insight into the warfighter perspective at the fourth annual land navigation training exercise in the St. Louis area, Nov. 6.

LandNav 4.0 was the largest one yet, bringing together 86 NGA participants with 56 Gateway Reserve Officer Training Corps Battalion members and the Missouri Army National Guard. 

The Gateway ROTC cadets delivered classroom instruction and served as field training team guides for the participants, and the Missouri Army National Guard, along with the Kansas Army Reserve Aviation Command, provided helicopters to transport groups from the classroom to the field training site. 

The land navigation exercise was founded in 2021 by NGA employee Rodney Mosquito as a way to help developers understand why NGA GEOINT products must be timely, relevant and accurate by walking a mile in the warfighter’s boots.

“I wanted [land navigation] to bridge the gap between those in the agency who have served and those who have not,” said Mosquito. “Also, to give those working in a geospatial agency the opportunity to learn how to use geospatial methods to navigate.”

NGA’s Natalie Nolen has been participating in the exercise from the start, when the exercise was limited to a software developer team. 

“Each year the event expanded in partnerships and popularity amongst NGA employees and local military ROTC units,” said Nolen. “The last two years we flew to the training grounds to test our field navigation via Blackhawk helicopters, and this year with the addition of a military Chinook, which allowed our civilian employees to experience the realistic use of our NGA data and in a rugged military environment.”

Land navigation demonstrates to the NGA participants how their products provide precise location-based information and intelligence that enable the warfighter to plan and conduct missions.

NGA’s Brienne Douglas came to the exercise with a goal of gaining insight into how to translate the land navigation exercise into their research.  

“When I first joined [my directorate], I used to go out to the different [deployable ground stations] and [combatant commands] to get an actual hands-on of what our warfighters are experiencing and what type of equipment they are dealing with,” said Douglas. “It helps us when we’re doing our research to know what type of limitations we have.”

The eight-hour event opened in an auditorium at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri, where third-year Gateway ROTC cadets, who hail from multiple St. Louis–area universities, took turns teaching the traditional method of navigation using nothing more than a map, compass and protractor. 

Many of the NGA participants were new to land navigation and had never practiced this geospatial skillset. 

NGA’s Ashley Suiter participated in the land navigation exercise for the first time and remembers the first year the exercise was held, and said she was so jealous that she didn’t get to participate. 

Now that the exercise has opened up to include more employees, this year’s exercise included a large group of her colleagues, many of whom were also first-time participants.
Once the NGA participants mastered map reading, including azimuths and plotting and terrain features, they moved on to route planning. 

The ROTC team leaders and NGA personnel broke into small groups to plan for the applied portion of the exercise. They mapped starting points, determined distances and prepared to adjust for using a compass in the field.

When it was time to put their learning to practical use, the groups took a short helicopter flight to the Weldon Spring Training Area, a high point of the training exercise, especially for those who had never before been in a military helicopter.

An aviation assault helicopter battalion in the Missouri Army National Guard from Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, piloted the participants back and forth in four UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters as part of their routine training operations. A general support aviation battalion in the Kansas Army Reserve Aviation Command also manned a CH-47 Chinook.

Participants began the field exercise by determining their pace counts, or the average steps an individual takes to cover 100 meters. They then headed out into the wooded area, almost evenly divided between those groups that had opted for the standard course and those that had chosen the challenge course.

Each group had 90 minutes to navigate the course from point to point and locate several markers, using maps and compasses and relying on some guidance from their ROTC leads.

“I realize how much I appreciate GPS and the importance of NGA’s GPS work,” said Suitor, after navigating the course and taking a few wrong turns.

Douglas’s group lost some time wandering off path and thus did not find many markers. 

“Using computer vision could have helped in making some of the land terrain out here a little easier to navigate,” Douglas said. 

Several participants emphasized how much they enjoyed the chance to interact with NGA employees from across the agency. Participants in this year’s event represented more than 60 NGA offices. 

Rachael Ackerman marked her one-year anniversary with NGA at the exercise. 

“A year ago, today, if someone had told me that we were going to be riding in helicopters and running around in the woods and trying to navigate, I would have thought they were joking,” said Ackerman. “It’s been an amazing experience and a unique challenge, being able to collaborate with our customers and see who we serve and impact on a daily basis.” 

Before the helicopters arrived for the return trip, ROTC cadets had a chance to hear more about NGA from Nolen, who had set up a recruiting station in the field.

“For the last four years, I have supported the event as an NGA ambassador by setting up a field recruitment station sharing our full-time opportunities, student internships and scholarship programs with the cadets,” said Nolen. “This year, as a branch chief for career development, this environment allowed NGA employees with career-related questions to have these conversations with me in an external environment.” 

NGA’s Kortny Watt appreciated the amount of logistics and coordination that went into planning the exercise. 

Watt said she came away from the exercise with enhanced decision-making, a better understanding of military perspective and improved teamwork, ultimately enhancing operational readiness and effectiveness when delivering GIS solutions.

At the end of the day, Watt summed up her experience and said, “the field training exercise provided a unique opportunity to hone our skills in a realistic and challenging environment. By integrating land navigation techniques into NGA’s training, we are able to simulate real-world scenarios, build confidence in our ability to create products used to navigate and operate effectively in any environment.”  

Mosquito expects that the training exercise will continue to evolve. 

“I would like to get the Coast Guard involved to make [land navigation] more of a joint exercise for small simulated joint operations — shipborne and airborne and then land navigation,” said Mosquito. “Participants could learn to read nautical charts as well as the topographic maps.”