General Dynamics Mission Systems and the US Army have flown a satellite-free navigation receiver at hypersonic speed for the first time, a step toward weapons that can find their way when GPS is jammed or absent.
The company said the demonstration paired its Multiple Orbit Navigation receiver, or MO-Nav, with the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Aviation and Missile Center. The flight used the reusable Talon-A test aircraft, which flies at Mach 5 and above.
MO-Nav is a single-board circuit card small enough to fit inside a weapon. It pulls position, navigation and timing data from multiple satellite constellations, signals of opportunity and commercial timing services rather than relying on GPS alone.
Why hypersonics raise the stakes
Fast-moving vehicles cross contested airspace where jamming is expected, and a lost fix can mean a missed target or a lost airframe. Matt Elliott, who directs General Dynamics’ weapons and navigation business, said GPS-denied navigation ranks among the largest capability gaps across the joint force, and that software-defined radios let programs keep pace with threats through upgrades instead of new hardware.
The receiver had already survived a cannon-fired artillery test, absorbing launch loads and feeding signal measurements to a munition’s mission computer.
General Dynamics is extending the design into a follow-on package called the Multiple Orbit Highly Assured Weapons Kit, or MOHAWK, which adds wider spectral and constellation diversity and scalable anti-jam protection. MOHAWK can carry an integrated M-Code receiver, the encrypted GPS signal reserved for military users.
The company and the Army research center are co-funding a 2027 hypersonic demonstration of MOHAWK with M-Code, with precision-guided munition trials to follow in 2028.
