In an era where electronic warfare has transformed from a niche capability into a dominant feature of modern conflict, the U.S. military is actively seeking alternatives to its long-standing reliance on the Global Positioning System (GPS). Highlighting this strategic shift, Austin-based defense technology startup Tern has secured an $11.26 million contract with the U.S. Army to deploy its low-cost, GPS-independent navigation technology across military vehicles.
Dubbed "Google Maps for the battlefield," Tern’s platform offers a decentralized, closed-loop solution designed to keep ground forces oriented even when space-based signals are completely jammed, spoofed, or unavailable. The contract represents a significant milestone for the young company, validating years of development aimed at solving one of the modern military’s most pressing vulnerabilities.
Main Facts: The $11.26 Million Deal and Tern’s Core Technology
The U.S. Army’s $11.26 million contract with Tern marks a major step toward operationalizing Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (A-PNT) technologies. While both Tern and the Army have remained tight-lipped regarding the exact scale, timeline, and specific vehicle platforms involved in the deployment, the core architecture of Tern’s solution highlights a paradigm shift in military hardware procurement: high-performance, low-cost, and rapidly scalable.
The Hardware and User Interface
Tern’s system bypasses the need for expensive, heavy, and highly sensitive military-grade inertial navigation systems (INS) by leveraging data that modern vehicles already generate. The hardware footprint is remarkably minimal:
- The Diagnostic Interface: A compact hardware device plugs directly into a vehicle’s onboard diagnostics port (such as the CAN bus or OBD system).
- The Processing Unit: The device connects to a ruggedized tactical tablet mounted in the vehicle cabin.
- The User Interface: The tablet serves as the primary interface, providing the driver and vehicle commander with real-time positioning, navigation, and routing.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| TERN SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| [ Vehicle Sensors ] (Wheel Speed, Steering, Odometry, etc.) |
| │ |
| ▼ |
| [ Diagnostics Board / CAN Bus ] |
| │ |
| ▼ (Passive Listening / Raw Data) |
| [ Tern Hardware Dongle ] |
| │ |
| ▼ (Edge Processing / Proprietary Algorithms) |
| [ Ruggedized Tactical Tablet ] |
| │ |
| ▼ (Visual Output) |
| [ Soldier Interface: Precise Latitude / Longitude & Routing ] |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+Passive Listening and Edge Computing
At the heart of Tern’s technological offering is its software stack. Rather than active broadcasting or sensor-heavy mapping, Tern’s system "passively listens" to the internal telemetry of the vehicle.
"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, and we provide both the position and navigation and routing there for the soldier," explained Tern co-founder and CEO Shaun Moore.
By capturing raw data points such as wheel speed, steering angle, transmission status, and internal inertial measurements, Tern’s proprietary algorithms perform high-speed edge processing to translate these mechanical inputs into precise latitude and longitude coordinates. Because the computations are performed locally on the vehicle’s "edge" processor, the system requires no connection to external satellites, cellular towers, or cloud infrastructure. It operates as a completely closed loop, making it virtually immune to external electronic disruption.
Chronology: From Special Operations to the Highway
The genesis of Tern’s technology is rooted in real-world combat experience, followed by years of rigorous commercial testing and iterative software engineering.
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| TERN DEVELOPMENT TIMELINE |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| [ Phase 1: Combat Inspiration ] |
| Co-founder Brett Harrison serves in Afghanistan with Special Operations; |
| experiences severe GPS vulnerabilities firsthand. |
| |
| [ Phase 2: Company Foundation ] |
| Harrison and Shaun Moore found Tern in Austin, TX, targeting |
| tactical, scalable, and non-scientific-project navigation. |
| |
| [ Phase 3: Technical Validation (1,300-Mile Test) ] |
| Harrison drives from Austin to Laguna Beach; Tern maintains continuous |
| tracking despite dozens of standard consumer GPS dropouts. |
| |
| [ Phase 4: Procurement & Award ] |
| Tern demonstrates its software-centric, low-cost integration; |
| U.S. Army awards $11.26 million contract for vehicle deployment. |
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+The Combat Catalyst
The operational necessity for Tern was conceived in the dust of conflict zones. Co-founder Brett Harrison served as part of a special operations task force in Afghanistan. During his deployment, the fragility of GPS-reliance became a daily tactical hazard. Operations in deep valleys, urban canyons, and areas subjected to localized electronic interference frequently left operators without reliable blue-force tracking or route navigation.
"From the very foundation of when we decided to embark upon this effort, we recognized it has to be actually deployable, actually scalable, and not a science project," Harrison said. "We weren’t interested in just seeing what we could prove. We wanted to make sure it actually was something that could get into the wild and serve a purpose."
Bridging the Gap in Austin
Returning to civilian life, Harrison partnered with tech entrepreneur Shaun Moore in Austin, Texas. The duo set out to design a system that did not rely on exotic, cost-prohibitive military sensors. Instead, they focused on software-driven sensor fusion. Over several years, Tern’s engineering team refined mathematical models capable of correcting the compounding errors—known as "drift"—that historically plagued dead-reckoning navigation systems.
The 1,300-Mile Proof of Concept
To prove the viability of their proprietary algorithms, the founders subjected the system to extreme real-world stress tests. Harrison recently utilized the Tern hardware and software stack during a 1,300-mile drive from Austin, Texas, to Laguna Beach, California.
The route spanned vast deserts, mountain passes, urban centers, and highway tunnels—environments notorious for degrading commercial GPS signals. According to the founders, while traditional consumer GPS systems lost connection or recalibrated dozens of times during the journey, Tern’s system maintained continuous, uninterrupted tracking of the vehicle’s position from origin to destination without a single external satellite update.
Supporting Data: The Global Crisis of GPS Vulnerability
The U.S. Army’s decision to fund Tern is a direct response to a rapidly deteriorating global electronic warfare environment. For decades, GPS was viewed as an unassailable utility. Today, it is a primary target for state and non-state adversaries.
The Rise of Spoofing and Jamming
In active conflict zones, GPS disruption has transitioned from an occasional tactical hindrance to a persistent, theater-wide denial-of-service event:
- Ukraine and Russia: Electronic warfare (EW) has reshaped the battlefield. Russian forces have deployed powerful jamming complexes, such as the Zhitel and Krasukha-4, which saturate the airspace with noise, rendering Western GPS-guided precision munitions—including Excalibur artillery shells and JDAM bombs—highly inaccurate. Ground forces on both sides regularly operate in completely GPS-denied environments.
- The Middle East: Commercial aviators and maritime vessels navigating the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf report daily encounters with GPS spoofing. Spoofing is far more dangerous than jamming; rather than simply blocking the signal, spoofers transmit false coordinates, tricking commercial autopilots and military navigation systems into displaying incorrect locations.
Domestic Vulnerabilities and Military Experiments
The threat is not confined to foreign theaters of war. The U.S. military has stepped up its own domestic electronic warfare exercises to prepare troops for degraded environments. However, these tests have occasionally carried severe civilian consequences.
Earlier this year, a civilian medevac helicopter crashed in New Mexico under challenging flight conditions. Investigations and industry reporting have scrutinized the U.S. military’s localized GPS jamming tests in the region as a potential contributing factor to the avionics anomalies experienced prior to the crash.
| Region / Context | Type of Disruption | Primary Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Eastern Europe | Heavy Jamming (EW Complexes) | Neutralization of GPS-guided munitions; loss of drone telemetry |
| Middle East / Med | Advanced Spoofing | Commercial aircraft and maritime vessels diverted or misdirected |
| Domestic US (Test Ranges) | Controlled Jamming Exercises | Interference with regional civilian aviation and emergency services |
The fragility of the system is often invisible to the public. "I don’t know that there is broad awareness on the fragility of the [GPS] system from a consumer standpoint," Moore noted. "I think people just see the blue dot on their phone and say it will always be there because it’s there now, right? Why wouldn’t it be there?"
Official Responses and Strategic Mandates
The deployment of Tern’s technology aligns directly with statutory mandates and executive directives issued over the last decade. Both the executive branch and Congress have long warned of the economic and national security catastrophes that would result from a sustained GPS outage.
Executive and Congressional Directives
During his first term, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order aimed at strengthening national resilience through the promotion of responsible use of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) services. This directive ordered federal agencies to identify and adopt GPS alternatives for critical national infrastructure and military defense systems.
Concurrently, Congress has repeatedly inserted language into annual National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA) requiring the Department of Defense to field-test and procure non-GPS navigation capabilities for tactical ground vehicles and dismounted soldiers.
The Army’s A-PNT Strategy
The U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors (PEO IEW&S) has led the charge in identifying rapid-acquisition solutions. The Army’s strategy relies on a layered approach:
- M-Code GPS: Upgrading receivers to utilize the military-specific, jam-resistant M-code signal.
- Alternative RF: Utilizing low-Earth orbit (LEO) commercial communication satellites as alternative positioning beacons.
- Autonomous Dead Reckoning: Adopting self-contained, onboard systems like Tern that require no external radio frequency (RF) emissions whatsoever.
By funding Tern, the Army is securing a tier-three capability: a completely passive, zero-emission navigation solution that continues to function even if both M-Code and LEO satellite networks are neutralized.
Implications: A New Era of Battlefield Autonomy and Commercial Utility
The integration of Tern’s low-cost hardware into the U.S. Army’s vehicle fleet has profound implications for the future of military operations, tactical defense procurement, and civilian technology.
Passive Survivability on the Modern Battlefield
In modern peer-to-peer conflict, emitting any form of electromagnetic radiation—whether radio communications, radar, or active sensor pings—is a potential death sentence. Adversaries utilize highly sensitive signals intelligence (SIGINT) systems to detect, locate, and target emitting units with precision artillery or drone strikes.
Because Tern’s system is entirely passive—it merely listens to the vehicle’s internal data bus and performs local calculations—it emits zero RF signature. Soldiers can navigate through contested territory without lighting up enemy electronic warfare monitors.
Disrupting the Defense Procurement Model
Traditionally, military navigation systems capable of operating without GPS relied on ring laser gyros or fiber optic gyros costing upwards of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit. These systems are heavy, difficult to calibrate, and production-constrained.
Tern’s approach flips this dynamic. By utilizing a software-first approach that runs on cheap, commercially available tablets and plugs into existing vehicle data ports, the Army can equip thousands of tactical utility vehicles, transport trucks, and armored personnel carriers at a fraction of the cost of traditional defense systems.
Commercial Spillover
While the immediate focus of the $11.26 million contract is military defense, the commercial applications for Tern’s technology are vast:
- Autonomous Trucking: Self-driving freight vehicles require continuous, high-fidelity positioning. GPS dropouts in tunnels, under overpasses, or during solar storms can cause autonomous systems to execute emergency stops, disrupting supply chains.
- Urban Air Mobility (UAM): Delivery drones and passenger air taxis operating in dense urban environments require robust backup navigation systems where GPS signal reflection (multipath interference) is common.
- Maritime and Mining: Heavy industrial equipment operating in deep open-pit mines or remote maritime environments can utilize Tern’s software-defined dead reckoning to maintain precise operational tracking without relying on expensive satellite subscriptions.
By transforming raw vehicle telemetry into highly accurate spatial awareness, Tern is proving that the future of navigation may not lie in the stars, but rather in the very machines we drive.
