To close that gap, Advanced Navigation America, the US arm of global positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) company Advanced Navigation, is expanding manufacturing in Huntsville, Alabama, to build and deliver some of the world’s most complex navigation technology at the speed and scale US defense programs depend on.
Backed by a $110 million Series C round, this new PNT Center of Excellence will research, develop, and manufacture advanced counter-electromagnetic warfare (EW) technologies across fiber optics, MEMs, laser sensing, photonics, vision-based systems, AI, and quantum sensing.
It will also accelerate US mergers and acquisitions, bringing complementary technologies and expertise into the company’s portfolio. Together, these investments will grow its US workforce and strengthen its secure, onshore capability to support classified US Department of War (DoW) programs.
“Assured PNT is becoming the backbone of modern autonomy, from combat vehicles and precision systems to Counter-UAS and autonomous vessels,” 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 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.”
Building fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) sensors precise enough to detect the Earth’s rotation requires engineering at a level similar to semiconductor fabrication, where even microscopic variations can affect performance. That makes the manufacturing technique itself part of the underlying intellectual property.
Advanced Navigation is one of few companies globally with the capability to produce strategic-grade FOGs and laser velocity sensors at scale. These technologies provide the precision required for defense systems to understand where they are and how they are moving when GPS is spoofed, jammed, or unavailable—across any harsh environment.
“With technology this precise, you can’t separate engineering from manufacturing,” said Chuck Matheny, Vice President of US Operations at Advanced Navigation America.
“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.”
Hard technology is difficult to invent, build, and manufacture at scale. Surrounded by Redstone Arsenal, the Missile Defense Agency, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and the headquarters of US Space Command, Rocket City has one of the highest concentrations of engineers and STEM workers per capita in the US. It has the specialist workforce and defense base required to manufacture complex technologies.
“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,” Cohen continued.
Today, Advanced Navigation has more than 100,000 systems deployed globally and works directly with the US Navy and US Army to define future PNT requirements through programs such as the All-Domain Persistent Experiment (APEX). Its customers include some of the world’s largest aerospace, defense, and technology organizations, including Anduril, Kongsberg, Rheinmetall, BAE Systems, Leonardo, and Lockheed Martin.
The Huntsville facility establishes a major US manufacturing node alongside Advanced Navigation’s Australian and United Kingdom operation arms, expanding across all three AUKUS nations. This strengthens supply-chain redundancy, increases global production capacity, and lets Advanced Navigation America respond faster to US defense requirements.
“America should not have to wait years for high performance navigation technology,” said Matheny. “Our investment in Huntsville gives our US 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.”
By turning deep technological breakthroughs into mass-producible, field-ready systems, Advanced Navigation America is equipping customers to operate with total confidence in the world’s most contested and extreme environments.
