Image of a low-cost automotive LIDAR sensor weighing around 170 g, which was used in Tactera for testing. (Flare Bright)
UK company Flare Bright Ltd is planning to improve the accuracy of its Tactera (Tactical Terrain) GPS-free navigation system from 30 m to 10 m by end of December 2025, the company's founder and CEO Kelvin Hamilton told Janes at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) 2025 exhibition held in London from 9 to 12 September.
"We have sometimes seen two or three meters [accuracy], which is comparable to high-end GPS," Hamilton said, without detailing the conditions for the observed accuracy readings. "It's a software system and we can just keep improving that algorithm over and over again and it will get better through next year [2026]," Hamilton added.
The company has secured a manufacturing facility outside Oxford and plans to produce 30 units per month to begin with. The system can be integrated with any unmanned aircraft system (UAS).
The system consists of Flare Bright's global navigation satellite services (GNSS)-free Software Enhanced Navigation System (SENS), commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) light detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensor, and digital terrain elevation maps for UAS location positioning. Hamilton calls the system "unjammable and unspoofable". During operational testing with jammers "the system ignored the jamming, it didn't even see it", according to Hamilton.
"All the jamming is really a communication signal, but we just don't use that. It's immune to all of that [jamming and spoofing]," Hamilton said.
The intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) system has the capability to operate with UASs flying lower than 100 m. "We work better below 150 m, the lower and faster you are - the happier we are," Hamilton said.