Long before satellites, a soldier who could read terrain could find a position within a few metres. The skill lay in matching what the map showed to what the ground actually did: a ridge line that fell away to the north, a stream that bent where the contours crowded together, a saddle between two hills. None of it required instruments beyond a compass. What it required was the patience to look at the ground and the map together until they agreed. Units that still teach the method argue that it is not nostalgia. Satellites fail, batteries run flat, and signals are jammed, and a navigator who has never learned to read ground has nothing to fall back on.
The main point of the passage is that
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Correct answer to question 23 (Paragraph Comprehension): terrain reading remains worth teaching because equipment can fail
Method
The final sentences give the reason directly: satellites fail and batteries run flat, so the fallback matters. The passage never claims the old method is more accurate, only that it still works when the new one stops.
Updated: November 2026
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