Austin-based startup Tern has secured an $11.26 million contract from the U.S. Army to implement its low-cost alternative to GPS navigation in military vehicles. The company describes its system as a form of "Google Maps for the battlefield," although details about the deployment scale remain undisclosed.
The Army's interest in Tern's technology comes amid increasing GPS interference, particularly in regions like the Middle East and over the airspace of Ukraine and Russia. Reports indicate that the U.S. military has experimented with GPS jamming, which may have contributed to incidents such as a medevac plane crash earlier this year. Efforts to develop resilient navigation systems that do not depend on GPS have been ongoing within the military and Congress for several years.
Tern's approach leverages data generated by modern vehicles during operation. The system connects to a vehicle's diagnostics board and transmits information to a tablet interface used by soldiers. Using proprietary processing methods, Tern converts this data into accurate position and routing information without disrupting the vehicle's normal data flow.
This edge-processing capability enables vehicles to determine their location independently, which is advantageous in environments where GPS signals are unreliable or unavailable, such as tunnels, deserts, or off-road terrain. One of Tern's co-founders demonstrated the technology's reliability by navigating a 1,300-mile trip without losing positional accuracy, in contrast to traditional GPS systems that experienced multiple outages.
An additional benefit of Tern's system is its closed architecture, making it less vulnerable to adversarial disruption compared to open GPS signals. This robustness is critical for military applications where navigation reliability can impact mission success and safety.
Co-founder Brett Harrison, a military veteran, emphasized that the contract validates years of development aimed at creating a deployable and scalable solution rather than a theoretical project. His experience in special operations in Afghanistan informed the team's focus on practical, field-ready technology.
The Army's investment in Tern reflects a broader push to enhance navigation resilience amid evolving electronic warfare threats, highlighting the importance of alternative positioning technologies in modern military operations.