Advanced Navigation America is expanding its manufacturing footprint in Huntsville, Alabama, establishing a Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Center of Excellence to address a gap in U.S. production capacity for navigation technologies used by defense systems operating in contested environments.
The expansion comes as the Pentagon seeks to increase the deployment of autonomous systems, with $53.6 billion requested in the FY2027 President’s Budget. According to Advanced Navigation, demand for navigation technology capable of operating when Global Positioning System (GPS) signals are jammed, spoofed, or unavailable is outpacing production capacity.
Supported by a $110 million Series C funding round, the new Center of Excellence will research, develop, and manufacture technologies designed to counter Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) challenges, spanning fiber optics, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), laser sensing, photonics, vision-based systems, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and quantum sensing. The company also plans to accelerate U.S. mergers and acquisitions, expand its U.S. workforce, and strengthen secure domestic manufacturing capabilities to support classified U.S. Department of War (DoW) programs.
Mike Cohen, President of Advanced Navigation America, commented, “Assured PNT is becoming the backbone of modern autonomy, from combat vehicles and precision systems to Counter-UAS and autonomous vessels. The challenge for America is making sure the industrial base can produce these vital technologies as quickly and reliably as they are needed. That is the gap we are addressing in Huntsville, with high-performance manufacturing, faster delivery and missionization located just minutes from the defense primes and DoW customers we currently serve.”
The expansion will build on Advanced Navigation’s capabilities in producing strategic-grade Fiber-Optic Gyroscopes (FOGs) and laser velocity sensors. Manufacturing FOG sensors precise enough to detect the Earth’s rotation requires engineering techniques comparable to those used in semiconductor fabrication, where microscopic variations can affect performance and manufacturing processes form part of the underlying intellectual property.
Advanced Navigation states that it is among the few companies worldwide capable of producing strategic-grade FOGs and laser velocity sensors at scale. These technologies support accurate positioning and motion tracking when GPS is unavailable or compromised, including in harsh operating environments.
Chuck Matheny, Vice President of U.S. Operations at Advanced Navigation America, added, “With technology this precise, you can’t separate engineering from manufacturing. Production, calibration and validation all have to work together. Bringing those capabilities under one roof gives us control from the sensor through to the finished system. This means we can move beyond the limitations of legacy navigation tech and build for what warfighters need today, and the missions they haven’t faced yet.”
Huntsville, known as Rocket City, has an established aerospace and defense industry, with organizations including Redstone Arsenal, the Missile Defense Agency, and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center located in the area. The region also has a substantial engineering and technical workforce, supporting its role as a center for advanced technology development and manufacturing.
Cohen said, “Huntsville has spent generations turning hard science into American capability. We’re putting the people who build and missionize this technology within minutes of our defense customers, changing how quickly we understand a requirement, solve it and deploy it into the field.”
The Huntsville facility will establish a major U.S. manufacturing operation alongside Advanced Navigation’s existing operations in Australia and the United Kingdom, expanding its manufacturing presence across all three AUKUS nations to strengthen supply-chain redundancy, increase global production capacity, and improve responsiveness to U.S. defense requirements.
Advanced Navigation reports that it has more than 100,000 systems deployed worldwide and works directly with the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army to define future PNT requirements through programs including the All-Domain Persistent Experiment (APEX). Its customers include aerospace, defense, and technology companies such as Anduril, Kongsberg, Rheinmetall, BAE Systems, Leonardo, and Lockheed Martin.
Matheny stated, “America should not have to wait years for high performance navigation technology. Our investment in Huntsville gives our U.S. defense customers direct access to the technology, engineering expertise and support they need for their most critical programs, backed by additional capability across Australia and the United Kingdom.”
