NAVAIR contracts Near Earth Autonomy for GPS-free ship-to-shore drone logistics

The US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) has contracted Near Earth Autonomy, the Pittsburgh-based developer of autonomous flight systems, to build an autonomy package that lets uncrewed aircraft carry supplies between ships and the shore without relying on GPS or a constant radio link. The work is aimed at the US Marine Corps, which wants small cargo drones that can keep operating in contested waters where satellite navigation and communications may be jammed or deliberately switched off.

The award was announced by Near Earth on 27 March 2026. It was placed through an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) under the Naval Aviation Systems Consortium, a contracting route the Navy uses for prototype work. The value of the contract has not been disclosed.

What the contract covers

Near Earth is to develop an aircraft-agnostic solution, meaning the same autonomy system should work across different airframes rather than being tied to one manufacturer's drone. The target missions are ship-to-shore, shore-to-ship and ship-to-ship transfers of cargo.

According to the company, three capabilities will be matured under the agreement:

• autonomous operations in confined areas, such as small landing zones ashore or crowded decks;
• recovery to a ship under emissions control (EMCON), when the vessel limits or stops its radio and radar transmissions to avoid detection;
• navigation without GPS.

The programme was set up as a series of test events intended to validate requirements, refine operating procedures and verify performance step by step. Those tests were planned to end with a final demonstration alongside NAVAIR at Patuxent River, Maryland, in September 2026. The company said the demonstration would cover ship searching, deck tracking, night operations and autonomous flights between moving vessels.

The Firefly system

The hardware at the centre of the work is Firefly, Near Earth's compact autonomy unit. It weighs 2 lb (about 0.9 kg), which the company says makes it suitable for a wide range of Class 3 and Class 4 uncrewed aircraft. Coverage of the award by AIN's FutureFlight described it as a payload module combining cameras and sensors with navigation software and flight-control interfaces.

Firefly has already been integrated on aircraft from BAE Systems, L3Harris and Pterodynamics. Images released with the announcement show it fitted to the L3Harris FVR-90 and the BAE Systems TRV-150. Near Earth positions Firefly as the system that enables small cargo drone operations for Marine Corps efforts such as the Tactical Resupply Unmanned Aircraft System (TRUAS) programme.

Sanjiv Singh, Near Earth's chief executive, described the Navy contract as the next step in maturing the company's autonomy for maritime missions, building on its earlier work on compact systems for uncrewed logistics.

Why GPS-free navigation matters at sea

Most uncrewed aircraft depend on GPS for position and on a continuous data link to a ground station. Both are vulnerable. Satellite signals can be jammed or spoofed, and a ship that keeps transmitting to guide a drone home can reveal its position to an adversary. When either is lost, many current systems cannot complete their task.

The problem is sharpened by the way the Marine Corps now expects to fight. Under the Navy's Distributed Maritime Operations concept and the Marines' Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, small units are spread across islands, coastlines and ships. Keeping them supplied increases the demand for logistics flights, while sending crewed helicopters exposes aircrew to greater risk. A drone that can find a moving ship, track its deck and land on it at night, using only its own sensors, removes one of the main dependencies that an opponent could target.

Who Near Earth Autonomy is

Near Earth is based in Pittsburgh and has more than 13 years of work on autonomy for defence programmes. Its technology is designed to let aircraft take off, fly and land on their own, with or without GPS, on platforms ranging from small drones to full-size helicopters. The company says its systems have accumulated more than 10,000 flights across more than 140 airframes.

Its Marine Corps history includes:

• the Autonomous Aerial Cargo/Utility System (AACUS), an early programme in autonomous rotorcraft resupply;
• the Unmanned Logistics Systems-Air (ULS-A) Joint Capability Technology Demonstration, where it shrank that technology for small drones operating in confined areas;
• the USMC Aerial Logistics Connector programme, for which NAVAIR selected it in July 2024.

The maritime award is one of several the company has announced this year. In March 2026 it reported the first fully automated Black Hawk flight from take-off to landing with its partners on the Army's uncrewed logistics Black Hawk effort. In April, NAVAIR awarded it the Medium Aerial Resupply Vehicle - Expeditionary Logistics (MARV-EL) Increment 2 programme, under which it will lead a team with Bell, Moog and XP Services to prototype an uncrewed Bell 505 able to meet a threshold of 1,300 lb of payload over a 100 nm combat radius. That work is planned to run for 36 months.

Commercial partnerships have followed. In July Near Earth agreed to work with Vertical Aerospace on equipping the Valo aircraft for uncrewed operations, and in August it signed a memorandum of understanding with Moog to integrate its Captain autonomous pilot with Moog's Genesys avionics suite.

Status of the September demonstration

As of 10 October 2026, neither Near Earth nor NAVAIR has published results from the Patuxent River demonstration, and The Flying Engineer has found no independent reporting confirming that it took place as scheduled. Near Earth's most recent press releases, from July and August, deal with its Vertical Aerospace and Moog agreements. We will update this article when the outcome is made public. More information on the Navy's aviation test work is available from NAVAIR.