Anyone know if modern military aircraft have something similar? I imagine it would be even cheaper and easier to do these days given the processors and cameras we now have. Seems like a good backup to have.
Fighters don't have the legs to fly far enough that celestial navigation becomes worth the added complexity.
For other air mobility platforms like the C-130 or C-17 in my experience they do not include these features, as GPS, INS, and regular old "ask ATC for a vector" are usually good enough.
There are ongoing experiments with magnetic and other forms of navigation, some of which are classified, but I'm a civilian now so I don't know any specifics.
You are probably right that this went away sometime in the 1970s.
Damn, now I'm feeling old. I miss the stars.
I'm saying something different, which is that unlike the SR-71, the C-130 didn't and doesn't have an instrument that scans the sky and automatically determines where it is based on the constellations it can see.
What’s actually on aircraft tends to be classified.
Yet we see Ukraine doing precision strikes not only with long-range missiles, but also with all kinds of drones.