With GPS systems and other geographical technology being as sophisticated as it now is, do lighthouses still serve an integral purpose? Are they more now just in case the captain/crew lapses on the monitoring of navigation systems? Obviously lighthouses are more immediate and I guess tangible, but do they still fulfil a purpose beyond mitigating basic human error?
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In addition to redundancy and emergency use, it is good to keep the old skills alive. The US Navy is bringing back manual navigation (sextants, “mo board’s” and other non technology reliant tools).
In 2007 us Navy ships started relying on computer aided navigation and plotting, but over the years s have had a number of navigation errors. There are many reasons, but one of them is the fact that the technology brings inattention. (If you are required to “shoot a fix” every 5 min on landmarks and fixed points like lighthouses your attention is on the navigation). Some other reasons are cyber attacks and redundancy In case the computer aided methods fail. It is always good to have a manual backup, a fact that the younger generations never learned..
Here is an article on the navy teaching sextant use again.
https://www.stripes.com/news/break-out-the-sextant-navy-teaching-celestial-navigation-again-1.391219
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