The Army's $11M navigation bet

The U.S. Army awarded Austin startup Tern an $11.26 million contract to deploy its non-GPS navigation tech in military vehicles.

The growing threat to GPS

GPS disruptions and signal jamming are surging across war zones in Ukraine, Russia, and the Middle East, leaving troops vulnerable when satellite signals drop.

Navigation powered by diagnostics

Tern plugs directly into a vehicle's onboard diagnostic board. It passively reads sensor data and feeds coordinates directly to a soldier's tablet.

“We’ve got a device that plugs into the diagnostics board of the vehicle, wired to a tablet, and then that tablet is the interface for the soldier to use”

A closed system on the edge

By using local edge processing, the system calculates coordinates independently. Electronic warfare systems cannot jam signal connections that do not exist.

“I don’t know that there is broad awareness on the fragility of the [GPS] system from a consumer standpoint.”

Proven on a 1,300-mile drive

Tern's co-founder tested the device on a drive from Texas to California. Traditional GPS dropped out dozens of times, but Tern never lost its location once.

Built for immediate battlefield use

Designed by a military veteran, the system was built for real battlefield deployment rather than remaining an academic experiment.

“We recognized it has to be actually deployable, actually scalable, and not a science project.”