Special forces how to determine the latitude, longitude and altitude?

Scout is through the observation of the surrounding terrain reference, and then compared with the precision military map carried first find their own position on the map, latitude, longitude and elevation are marked on the map, do not need to determine.

The main task of the scouts was to discover the position of important hidden enemy targets, such as artillery batteries. When they have determined their position by the foregoing method, they can measure the distance of the target from them without instruments by the jump-eye method. The method is: close the left eye, stretch out the right arm to stand up the thumb at the target, and then keep the posture unchanged and close the right eye, observe the position seen by the left eye and the target of the interval, estimate and calculate the actual distance of this interval is how much (this according to the size of the target or the nearby references can be deduced), and then multiply this distance by 10, that is, the target is from the actual distance of their own. This is a simple trigonometric problem, the principle is that the distance between the thumb and the human eye is 10 times the distance between the two pupils. The next step is to locate the target on a map based on this distance and inform your own commander.

The above approach is of course not too precise and has much to do with the quality of the scouts. But usually scouts will carry artillery mirrors and azimuths, and at the simplest level, military binoculars (which are more accurate in terms of distance measured by the scale on the mirror) and a compass. Usually scouts do not need to measure the altitude, want to know with the barometric altimeter on the line, is smaller than the compass is also simple thing.

Sea navigation without reference, have to use a sextant to measure the bearing. Of course, you don't need to measure the altitude to know that it is zero.

These are traditional methods. Modern scouts use a GPS receiver (which is the size of a cell phone) to easily and covertly get their exact latitude, longitude and altitude. Then using a laser rangefinder they can immediately get extremely accurate target distances. Of course, the traditional methods described above are still mandatory for scouts, and can come in handy in case nothing is available.