A test flight that allowed an aircraft to navigate stretches of the ocean without relying on the same GPS civilians use to move through traffic is the latest advance in aviation, officials said.
The Defense Innovation Unit announced it had successfully tested MagNav, the unit’s magnetic navigation program. The flight test is a critical advancement for the future of aviation and national security, the unit said.
“This is a significant win for the department’s quantum sensing priorities, showcasing that MagNav capabilities are no longer a distant research goal,” Kyle Norman, deputy director of DIU’s Kill Web portfolio said. “We moved from problem sourcing to solicitation to prototype in a matter of months.”
Officials said the MagNav program, then called the “Transition of Quantum Sensing,” launched in the spring of 2024. A total of 72 companies submitted applications to the program, with Honeywell Aerospace winning the bid to move forward with a prototype. The MagNav systems use quantum sensors to read the Earth’s natural magnetic field, turning the planet’s crust into an unjammable map that allows pilots to navigate regardless of weather, time of day or GPS availability, the DIU unit said.
The new technology provides a navigation system that cannot be blocked by hostile forces or spoofed, Normal said. It also significantly improves on legacy backup options for things like radar mapping or visual cues like rivers, highways and cities.
Once installed on an Embraer 170 aircraft, the plane took off over the Pacific Ocean and flew from Seattle’s Puget Sound to Southern Alaska and back. After more than four hours of flying over the ocean without GPS, the MagNav system improved position accuracy by 89 percent compared to traditional backup navigation methods. The navigation data streamed directly to the pilots, showing that military personnel can implement the technology without overhauling cockpit instrumentation. The test mission also had the added complexity of the featureless, constantly shifting ocean surface that, in the absence of GPS navigation, would traditionally require internal sensors. Using the Earth’s magnetic signatures, MagNav was able to provide pilots with an accurate, continuous map without landmarks.
Officials with DIU said the unit is planning to join Honeywell to demonstrate the technology on a U.S. military C-17 Globemaster III cargo aircraft later this year.