Success on a battlefield is no longer about weaponry and tactics, with electronic warfare also taking aim at the technology that drives military assets, including GPS navigation.
Sydney-based autonomous systems developer Advanced Navigation has successfully neutralised GPS-jamming as a strategic threat in testing with the US Army.
The startup, founded in 2012 by Chris Shaw and Xavier Orr, is a global leader in what’s known as assured positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies.
They’ve developed what’s known as an inertial navigation system – a self-contained, autonomous navigation device to calculate position, orientation, and velocity in real-time without needing external references (aka dead-reckoning). The systems are also being used for polar exploration and plans for landing on the moon.
Advanced Navigation recently took part in the US Army’s All-Domain Persistent Experiment (APEX). It involved a simulated high-threat battlefield under attack from electronic warfare designed to cripple traditional nav systems – known in military jargon as a “denied environment”.
The demonstration used a four-wheel armoured vehicle during night operations in rural New Mexico, USA.
They combined their home-grown inertial system, a magic black box called Boreas D90 Fibre-Optic Gyroscope, with a wheel speed encoder and laser velocity sensors (LVS) to deliver remarkably precise positioning. After travelling 65km, the location estimate was out by just 7.5m – a 0.012% error.
The Boreas D90 determines true North through gyrocompassing, using ultra-sensitive fibre-optic gyroscopes to detect the Earth’s rotation.
LVS is a new class of navigation tech developed by Advanced Navigation for vehicles to “see” movement without satellites or emitting detectable radar signatures.
A fundamental shift
CEO Chris Shaw, a founder fond of acronyms, said the result is a fundamental shift in how the military survives in contested environments.
“In today’s contested environment, the adversary will deny, degrade, and spoof GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals. Relying on a single technology for navigation is a mission-ending vulnerability,” he said.
“The only path to operational advantage is an intelligent, multi-sensor fusion anchored by a resilient inertial core. We deliver this with our sophisticated AdNav Intelligence software.
“Now in our third year participating in this US Army program, APEX continues to challenge our systems under realistic electronic warfare conditions.”
Shaw said the results from APEX demonstrate significant potential for a range of current and future defence applications for Advanced Navigation and the technology exceeded the team’s expectations.
The next experiment will include partners in the US Air Force’s 746th Test Squadron and the Joint Navigation Warfare Center, US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, and the Army Test and Evaluation Command later this year.
