A session under way during the 15th IAIN World Congress held at the Corinthia Hotel, Prague.

Professor David Last gave the keynote address on the Navigation of Navigation. He pointed out that navigation had been taken out of the hands of the professionals and specialists and become a ‘consumer product’. There was no clear plan to handle this development. GPS/GNSS meets all needs, but there are concerns about vulnerability, including jamming and spoofing. Hardening, alternatives, multiple systems, Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM), reversion to traditional methods all have a place. eLoran is the only cost-effective solution available at present, but it has not been delivered yet. It has been shown to work and could be commercially operated, but there are no clear plans anywhere – Governments cannot handle the problem and he believed the navigation community is approaching the end of the era of systems, with vertical integration. Multiple GNSS are components of a system. They live and die together and here a flight plan is needed.

Professor František Vejražka of the Czech Institute of Navigation, centre, with at left, Captain Dick Smith, President of the IAIN and Professor Yasuo Arai of the Japanese Institute of Navigation. At the close of the Congress IAIN Honorary Membership was conferred on Professor Vejražka and Professor Arai was advanced to President.

David Calero of Spain was presented with the Sadek Award for the best paper presentation.

Illustrations reproduced by kind permission of Guarant International spol.s.r.o.