Advanced Navigation expands U.S. manufacturing in Huntsville to supply navigation systems for operations without reliable GPS
Advanced Navigation America is expanding manufacturing in Huntsville, Alabama, to supply navigation systems for defense and autonomous platforms operating without reliable GPS. A new Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Center of Excellence will bring research, development and production together at the site.
The expansion is backed by a $110 million Series C funding round. The company also plans to accelerate U.S. acquisitions and grow its American workforce as it adds technologies and production capacity.
“Resilient navigation is becoming the backbone of the autonomy shaping the future of defense, space, marine, mining and heavy industry,” said Mike Cohen, president of Advanced Navigation America. “The challenge for America is making sure the industrial base can produce these vital technologies as quickly and reliably as demand is growing.”
The center will work on fiber optics, microelectromechanical systems, laser sensing, photonics, vision-based systems, artificial intelligence and quantum sensing. These technologies support navigation in environments where GPS signals are denied, degraded or unavailable.
Advanced Navigation says it is among a small number of companies that can produce strategic-grade fiber optic gyroscopes and laser velocity sensors at scale. Its gyroscopes are precise enough to detect Earth’s rotation, with microscopic manufacturing variations capable of affecting performance.
The company treats those manufacturing methods as part of its intellectual property. Bringing production, calibration and validation together is intended to give it control over the process from sensor fabrication to the finished navigation system.
“With technology this precise, you can’t separate engineering from manufacturing,” said Chuck Matheny, vice president of U.S. operations at Advanced Navigation America. “Production, calibration and validation all have to work together.”
The Huntsville facility will add a major U.S. manufacturing site alongside Advanced Navigation’s operations in Australia and the United Kingdom. The company says that presence across the three AUKUS countries will increase capacity and provide supply-chain redundancy.
Huntsville offers an engineering workforce and an industrial base serving defense and space programs. Redstone Arsenal and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center are based in the city.
“Huntsville has spent generations turning hard science into American capability,” Cohen said. “We’re putting the people who build and missionize this technology within minutes of our customers, changing how quickly we understand a requirement, solve it and deploy it into the field.”
Advanced Navigation says it has more than 100,000 systems deployed worldwide across land, air, sea and space applications. Its customers include Anduril, NOAA, Leonardo, BHP, Rheinmetall and Intuitive Machines.
The company’s technology supports underground mining, maritime operations, defense systems and lunar exploration. The Huntsville expansion is intended to shorten delivery times and give U.S. customers closer access to engineering and technical support.
“The challenge isn’t simply inventing better technology,” Cohen said. “It’s being able to manufacture it reliably, at scale, and get it into the hands of our customers in weeks rather than years.”
