By Jen Sovada, President, Global Public Sector; Luca Ferrara, General Manager - Navigation, SandboxAQ
On July 18, a United States Air Force (USAF) C-17 Globemaster III took off from Charleston Air Force Base (CAFB) on an important mission – to demonstrate AQNav, our real-time AI magnetic navigation system. We’re proud to say that AQNav exceeded its objectives, completing several major milestones with the USAF and advancing AQNav to the next phase of its development.
For the first time since its inaugural test flight in May 2023 during Exercise Golden Phoenix (and later during Exercise Mobility Guardian), AQNav was used for real-time navigation in a real-world environment. Prior flight tests were designed to prove the system’s capabilities and capture additional magnetic signals emanating through the Earth’s crust. This time, USAF pilots used AQNav to acquire their aircraft’s position and navigate to designated coordinates without GPS – marking another unprecedented milestone in magnetic navigation.
After the plane landed, our team packed up the system in under 20 minutes, rolled it onto another plane, and took to the skies again – and again, and again. This exercise demonstrated AQNav’s dynamic ability to adapt and calibrate itself on a particular aircraft type and have it perform equally well on other aircraft of the same type. This capability – called generalizability – is critical to ensure that the USAF and our commercial partners are able to deploy AQNav across their fleets at scale.
This significant achievement was made possible through our collaboration with the Palmetto Spark Cell at CAFB. They played a crucial role in enabling us to test AQNav for real-time use in critical GPS-denied environments. Their support and feedback allowed us to tailor our magnetic navigation system to meet the most demanding GPS denied use-cases for Air Mobility Command. By providing a platform for rigorous testing and iterative development, the Palmetto Spark Cell has been instrumental in advancing AQNav's capabilities and ensuring its readiness for deployment in real-world scenarios.
With daily instances of GPS denial, jamming and spoofing increasing exponentially around the globe, the need for an unjammable, unspoofable, all-weather, day/night, terrain-agnostic, and passive signal system has become even more imperative. Such a system is essential to ensure the safety of passengers and equipment and maintain accurate navigation when GPS signals are unavailable or compromised.
The fact that experienced pilots were able to interact with AQNav in the cockpit – as part of a future complementary system-of-systems approach – is a major leap forward. We were able to capture their feedback to understand how to better integrate AQNav into existing systems and architectures and make it easier to use.
We are designing AQNav as a dual-use system with speed-to-market and scalability in mind. This dual-use strategy ensures that AQNav can be deployed efficiently and effectively across various platforms and use cases, from enhancing the navigational capabilities of military aircraft to providing reliable navigation solutions for commercial aviation and beyond.
Buoyed by the success of these recent milestones, our team will continue collaborating with the USAF and our commercial partners to further develop AQNav’s capabilities. Shortly before completing these recent milestones, the USAF awarded SandboxAQ a SBIR Phase 2B Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) to explore additional AQNav configurations for deployment on a wider range of aircraft platforms, including unmanned aerial systems.
A TACFI contract is a major achievement afforded to only a handful of solution providers, and winning this validates the incredible work that our team and collaboration partner AFWERX have accomplished. Similarly, on the commercial side, Acubed recently renewed its partnership with SandboxAQ to continue evaluating AQNav for commercial aviation. These collaborations are crucial as they put in place the foundation for the widespread adoption and standardization of magnetic navigation systems.
About AFRL
The Air Force Research Laboratory is the primary scientific research and development center for the Department of the Air Force. AFRL plays an integral role in leading the discovery, development, and integration of affordable warfighting technologies for our air, space and cyberspace force. With a workforce of more than 12,500 across nine technology areas and 40 other operations across the globe, AFRL provides a diverse portfolio of science and technology ranging from fundamental to advanced research and technology development. For more information, visit www.afresearchlab.com.
About AFWERX
As the innovation arm of the DAF and a directorate within the Air Force Research Laboratory, AFWERX brings cutting-edge American ingenuity from small businesses and start-ups to address the most pressing challenges of the DAF. AFWERX employs approximately 370 military, civilian and contractor personnel at five hubs and sites executing an annual $1.4 billion budget. Since 2019, AFWERX has executed over 6,200 new contracts worth more than $4.7 billion to strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base and drive faster technology transition to operational capability. For more information, visit: www.afwerx.com.
