Earlier this year, Honeywell’s defense navigation team was awarded $99M by the US Air Force’s Position, Navigation Timing Program Office (PNT-PO) to make all active Department of Defense (DOD) aircrafts support M-Code standards as part of their ‘EGI-M’ initiative.
M-code, or the new standard military code GPS signal, is designed to prevent GPS jamming, an increasing problem surrounding the aerospace industry by using new, encrypted receivers like Honeywell’s Embedded GPS inertial navigation system (EGI). Honeywell’s EGI product line utilizes an open infrastructure to more rapidly adapt and take in new capabilities so that customers can use new, high precision processors and alternative navigation technologies being developed for Urban Air Mobility like celestial navigation, vision navigation and much more.
“We’re very excited and appreciate the opportunity to work with the U.S. Air Force to advance our core product line and support the Department of Defense," said Nik Hartney, Director, Honeywell Aerospace. "Our EGI product line will play an integral role in helping the US Airforce modernize their aircraft and prevent GPS jamming, allowing them to continually improve their navigation technology across all their platforms in the future.”
In addition to preventing GPS jamming, the M-code requirements also require the military to meet the latest ADS-B Out requirements, which is also covered when using Honeywell’s EGIs. To date, Honeywell has shipped more than 60,000 EGIs to customers across the globe to be used in a variety of applications in the air, on the ground and at sea.
Click here for more information about Honeywell’s Embedded GPS inertial navigation systems.