Honeywell tests alternative navigation for GNSS-denied flight

Honeywell Aerospace presents results from demonstrations of celestial-, vision- and magnetic-aided navigation that support inertial systems when GNSS signals are lost. Its star-tracker based system matches GNSS-INS performance under real-world conditions, a result that bears on aircraft and uncrewed systems operating in jammed airspace.

By SamPublished October 28, 2026Updated November 4, 20261 min read

At a U.S. Army assured positioning, navigation and timing technology demonstration, Honeywell Aerospace shows three alternative navigation modalities that aid an inertial navigation system (INS) when GNSS signals are jammed, blocked or unavailable.

The celestial-aided system tracks stars and resident space objects to compute position in real time; Honeywell says it matches a GNSS-INS configuration under real-world conditions. The vision-aided system correlates long-wave infrared camera imagery with local map data, and the magnetic anomaly system compares measured readings with geographic magnetic maps.

Thandava Edara, Honeywell’s offering director for alternative navigation, says no single system can replace GNSS in the near term. Honeywell therefore fuses several modalities in a layered architecture so customers can combine technologies as needed.

The software layer is the Honeywell Alternative Navigation Architecture (HANA). It runs on existing onboard sensors and computers, supports the ASPN data standard and other messaging protocols, and integrates vision, magnetic anomaly, LEO satellite PNT, radar TAN and third-party applications. Vision Aided Navigation (VAN) comes as software only or with hardware and works with the Compact Inertial Navigation System (HCINS) and other inertial platforms. Vision-aided navigation is available now, while the magnetic anomaly and LEO modalities are listed for 2026.

Why it matters

Zurich University of Applied Sciences reports more than 700 jamming and spoofing incidents per day in 2024, so military aircraft and uncrewed systems regularly fly without usable GNSS data. For large UAS integrators, passive modalities independent of satellite signals keep INS drift in check, and software that reuses onboard sensors and computers limits added hardware.

Honeywell’s HGuide o480 INS/GNSS navigator addresses the same threat at the receiver with AIM+ anti-jamming, while the alternative navigation work targets complete loss of GNSS. Embention’s Veronte VBN is a comparable visual navigation system in the directory.

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