Austin-based startup Tern has won an $11.26 million contract from the US Army to deploy its low-cost GPS alternative technology in vehicles. The company was tight-lipped on the exact scale of the deployment of what it calls "Google Maps for the battlefield."
Tern's system uses a device that plugs into a vehicle's diagnostics board and is wired to a tablet, which serves as the soldier's interface for position, navigation and routing. Co-founder and CEO Shaun Moore said the company is "passively listening to" data generated by the vehicle and not disrupting its flow, using "proprietary methods" to make that information usable for navigation. He declined to go into specifics.
The technology allows a vehicle to determine its own position independently using edge processing, which Tern says is helpful both on- and off-road, in tunnels or in deserts. Co-founder Brett Harrison recently used it to navigate a 1,300-mile drive between Austin and Laguna Beach, California, and said the tech never lost his vehicle's place during the trip, while traditional GPS cut out dozens of times.
Moore said the closed nature of Tern's system makes it harder for adversaries to disrupt. "I don't know that there is broad awareness on the fragility of the [GPS] system from a consumer standpoint," he said. "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?"
The Army is tapping Tern at a time when GPS disruptions are on the rise, especially in the Middle East and in the skies above Ukraine and Russia. The US military itself has reportedly been experimenting with GPS jamming, which may have even contributed to the deadly crash of a medevac plane earlier this year. There have been multiple efforts from Congress and President Trump, during his first term, to develop resilient, non-GPS navigation technologies for military use.
Harrison, a military veteran who served in Afghanistan as part of a special operations task force, said the Army contract is validating after Tern spent years proving its tech works. "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," he said.