Aussie GPS alternative firm Advanced Navigation wins big Hanwha contract

LANDFORCES 2024 — A small Australian company, Advanced Navigation, scored a big win here today, signing agreements with Korean giant Hanwha to provide a unique inertial guidance systems for a range of the Asian company’s weapons.

“We’re really excited to announce that we have signed a contract with Hanwha Australia to supply the inertial navigation systems for their Redback vehicles for the Land 400 program,” CEO Chris Shaw told Breaking Defense. The contract, for $8.7 million AUD ($5.8 million USD), is a boost to Australia’s pursuit of what it calls sovereign capability.

The Redback is an infantry fighting vehicle meant to replace the country’s ancient M113 fleet. Hanwha won the $5-7 billion AUD ($3.38 billion US) contract in July 2023.

That deal, combined with a broader agreement for Advanced Navigation to supply its precision guidance systems to Hanwha worldwide, could lead to as much as a 400 percent increase in business for the Australian firm, Shaw said. However, that broader agreement, as far as was disclosed, does not include an immediate contract.

Advanced Navigation builds fiber-optic inertial guidance systems bolstered by artificial intelligence to provide systems that the company claims can operate in degraded combat environments, where GPS is subject to jamming or spoofing with a high degree of accuracy. That’s important, because the conflict in Ukraine has shown that active electronic warfare capabilities can largely sideline the kind of precision-guided systems the West has invested in heavily for decades. (For instance, the precision artillery projectile Excalibur has reportedly been largely sidelined by Ukraine because its effectiveness declined below 10 percent. The munition costs around $160,000 per unit.)

Shaw said his company already supplies systems used by Ukraine but he didn’t identify any of them.

“Navigation warfare has emerged as one of the most effective mechanisms to level the battlefield,” Mike Smith, CEO of Hanwha Defense US, said at the ceremony marking the broader agreement. “It has the potential to be the most expansive non-lethal effect in modern history.”

The agreement will see the companies collaborate on the development of high-performance inertial navigation systems (INS) for autonomous, airborne and crewed systems on land and in the air. The deal calls for co-production of the systems by Advanced Navigation and Hanwha, appearing to open the door to deals in every country where Hanwha’s defense units do business.