“Location. Location. Location.” is the most famous rule in real estate.

It also applies to navigation.

And, in these ever-changing times, some vital navigation technology is not keeping pace with growing demand.

So, to meet that demand, Advanced Navigation America, the U.S. arm of global robotics company Advanced Navigation, is expanding manufacturing in Huntsville to build and deliver some of the world’s most complex navigation technology at the speed and scale American industries depend on.

The company is opening a $110 million facility at 301 James Record Road, the former Line-X facility near Huntsville International Airport, for its Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Center of Excellence. 

Advanced Navigation has already begun hiring to fill some 75 to 100 positions across engineering, manufacturing and operations as it builds out the facility. Production is scheduled to begin next summer.

Once operational, the facility will manufacture precision navigation systems in Huntsville for U.S. programs that may require onshore capability to support classified programs. 

“Resilient navigation is becoming the backbone of the autonomy shaping the future of defense, space, marine, mining and heavy industry,” said company President Mike Cohen. “The challenge for America is making sure the industrial base can produce these vital technologies as quickly and reliably as demand is growing. 

“That is the gap we are addressing in Huntsville: bringing high-performance manufacturing, faster delivery and missionization closer to the customers and industries that depend on it.”

Employees will research, develop, and manufacture deep technologies across fiber optics, MEMs, laser sensing, photonics, vision-based systems, AI, and quantum sensing. The technology will help autonomous systems navigate the world’s harshest environments when GPS cannot be relied on. 

Building fiber optic gyroscope sensors precise enough to detect the Earth’s rotation requires engineering at a level similar to semiconductor fabrication, where even microscopic variations can affect performance. 

Advanced Navigation is one of a few companies that can produce strategic-grade FOGs and laser velocity sensors at scale. These technologies provide the precision required for defense and heavy industrial systems to understand where they are and how they are moving when GPSi is denied, degraded or unavailable across any harsh environment.

“With technology this precise, you can’t separate engineering from manufacturing,” said Chuck Matheny, vice president of U.S. operations. “Production, calibration and validation all have to work together. Bringing those capabilities under one roof gives us control from the sensor through to the finished system. 

“This means we can move beyond the limitations of legacy navigation tech and build for the applications driving industry today, and those still taking shape.”

With one of the highest concentrations of engineers and STEM workers per capita in the United States, Huntsville has the specialist workforce and industrial base required to manufacture complex technologies, Cohen said.

“Huntsville has spent generations turning hard science into American capability,” he said. “We’re putting the people who build and missionize this technology within minutes of our customers, changing how quickly we understand a requirement, solve it and deploy it into the field.”

Cohen said the Huntsville facility establishes a major U.S. manufacturing node alongside Advanced Navigation’s Australian and United Kingdom operation arms, expanding production capacity across all three AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) nations. 

This strengthens supply-chain redundancy, increases global production capacity and lets Advanced Navigation America respond faster to U.S. defense requirements, he said.

“The challenge isn’t simply inventing better technology,” Cohen said. “It’s being able to manufacture it reliably, at scale, and get it into the hands of our customers in weeks rather than years. 

“That is what we’re building in Huntsville.”

By turning deep technological breakthroughs into mass-producible, field-ready systems, Advanced Navigation America is equipping customers to operate with total confidence in the world’s most contested and extreme environments.

“America should not have to wait years for high performance navigation technology,” Cohen said. “Our investment in our PNT Center of Excellence gives our U.S. customers direct access to the technology, engineering expertise and support they need for their most critical programs, backed by additional capability across Australia and the United Kingdom.”