When a military air base stands up at a forward location and GPS signals are being jammed, aircraft cannot land on GPS alone. The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) resolved that gap today by awarding Thales in Spain a contract to supply a Deployable Tactical Air Navigation (D-TACAN) system to the Spanish Air and Space Force — and by structuring the deal as an open framework that any of NATO’s 32 member states can use to acquire the same system without running a separate competitive procurement, according to the NSPA D-TACAN contract announcement.
The contract arrives as GPS jamming has moved from an edge-case threat to a documented, routine feature of European airspace. Russia’s ground-based electronic warfare systems have disrupted more than 430,000 flights over conflict zones in 2024 alone, a sharp annual increase according to the IATA 2024 safety report. A single jamming event attributed to Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave knocked out navigation for more than 1,600 aircraft over Eastern Europe in two days in March 2024. In that environment, a ground-based navigation beacon that operates on an entirely different frequency, draws on no satellite infrastructure, and cannot be jammed by the same equipment that disrupts GPS is not a legacy curiosity — it is a working backstop.
Thales Holds a Structural Monopoly No Other NATO Nation Has Filled
Thales, through its Gorgonzola (Milan) facility in Italy, is the only European manufacturer of TACAN systems and the only company anywhere in the world that produces both ground-based TACAN beacons and airborne TACAN interrogators, as confirmed in the Thales D-TACAN press release. That dual-sided position — owning both the ground transmitter and the aircraft receiver — gives the company a vertical integration in military air navigation that no competitor has replicated in Europe. Its TACAN systems are in service with 14 NATO member states, with contracts spanning fixed air bases, naval vessels, and the new deployable category this deal expands.
The sole-source European production model means that the D-TACAN Spain is receiving, and that any ally can now order under the same framework, all flows through one factory in Gorgonzola. That concentration is framed in the announcement as a European sovereignty advantage — an Italian-manufactured, Spanish-integrated system within a single NATO supply chain. Military planners will also note what it implies in a degraded-logistics scenario: a structural dependence on a single production site for a system central to air navigation resilience.
What TACAN Actually Does — and Why It Survives GPS Jamming
TACAN — Tactical Air Navigation — was developed starting in 1945 by ITT’s Federal Communications Laboratory under engineer Henri G. Busignies, driven by the U.S. Navy’s need for a navigation system accurate enough to find a moving aircraft carrier in open water, according to the history of the Tactical Air Navigation System. It operates in the UHF band between 962 and 1213 MHz, running on 126 channels in X-mode (plus additional Y-mode channels added in the 1960s), and provides an aircraft with two pieces of information: its bearing to the ground station and its slant-range distance from it.
The range function works on radar timing: the aircraft’s interrogator sends a narrow pulse pair, the ground beacon responds, and the aircraft’s receiver measures the round-trip delay and converts it to distance. Reliable range determination extends to approximately 130 nautical miles (149 miles) below 45,000 feet (13,716 m), with signals trackable above 200 nautical miles (230 miles) at altitude. Bearing works through a rotating antenna pattern — or its electronic equivalent in modern systems — that creates a cardioid radiation field spinning at 15 Hz for coarse bearing and 135 Hz (nine-times-faster harmonic) for fine bearing. The aircraft compares the phase of what it receives against reference pulses to determine its angular position relative to due east. Operational bearing accuracy is approximately ±1 degree, according to TACAN accuracy specifications.
The reason TACAN survives GPS jamming where GPS cannot is physics, not design choice. GPS broadcasts from satellites at 20,200 kilometers (12,553 miles) altitude; by the time those L-band signals reach Earth, they arrive at below -160 dBW — roughly the signal strength of a car headlight seen from that distance. A portable software-defined-radio jammer costing under $100 can overwhelm that signal locally. TACAN is a ground-based transmitter operating at much shorter ranges with correspondingly stronger received signal strength. Critically, it operates on UHF frequencies (962–1213 MHz), while GPS uses L-band (1575 MHz and 1227 MHz). A GPS jammer must broadcast on different frequencies to also jam TACAN, requiring a fundamentally different — and more complex — attack, as explained in Point One Navigation’s TACAN as GPS backup in PNT resilience.
How Modern Military Aircraft Use All Three Layers at Once
The operational purpose of a deployable TACAN beacon is to support the layered navigation architecture that modern military aircraft already carry. A combat aircraft’s navigation suite typically includes an inertial navigation system (INS), GPS, and a TACAN interrogator. In uncontested airspace, GPS provides continuous positioning. When GPS is jammed, the aircraft’s INS continues to track position using accelerometers and gyroscopes — but inertial systems accumulate drift over time, typically between 0.1 and 1 nautical mile per hour depending on quality, growing less accurate the longer they run without an external position fix, a well-established limitation of INS drift in GPS-denied environments.
A TACAN bearing and range fix from a ground beacon corrects the INS, resetting its drift to zero and maintaining approach accuracy even in a fully GPS-denied environment. The pilot identifies a TACAN channel, locks onto the beacon, and the aircraft’s avionics use the bearing and range data to update position — a process that can be completed continuously throughout an approach, en route, and landing. The D-TACAN Spain has acquired is specifically designed to make this capability available at expeditionary air bases: temporary military airfields that may be stood up anywhere a runway can be cleared, wherever the mission requires.
The Thales Ground Based TACAN 553 supports simultaneous interrogation by up to 200 aircraft, a capacity relevant for a busy military hub rather than a single aircraft’s private navigation aid.
What Goes Into the 20-Foot ISO Shelter
The deployable format solves the engineering problem of getting a TACAN beacon — normally a fixed installation requiring a prepared site, antenna tower, and utility connections — to an expeditionary location that may have none of those things.
Thales integrates the entire system into a standard 20-foot ISO container: 6.1 meters (20 ft) long, 2.4 meters (7.9 ft) wide, 2.6 meters (8.5 ft) tall. That form factor is significant because any logistics chain capable of moving standard intermodal cargo — C-17 airlift, C-130 transport, a flatbed truck, a cargo ship — can deliver this system. No special cradles, no custom transport aircraft configuration, no site preparation beyond a stable surface and space for the antenna.
Inside the container are all the systems required for self-sufficient operation: an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), an onboard power generation system, and integrated communications capability. The design intention is that the system can be transported, deployed, and brought to operational status at an expeditionary airfield with minimal infrastructure — then recovered and redeployed as the operational situation changes.
The contract also includes a comprehensive integrated logistics support package covering spare parts, training, product information, and electronic documentation, covering the full lifecycle of the system rather than just the initial delivery.
The NSPA Framework Logic — and Why the Counter-Drone Precedent Matters
The most consequential element of today’s announcement may not be the system itself but how the contract is structured. NSPA’s framework mechanism allows the agency to pre-qualify a solution through one competitive procurement process, then make it available for additional purchases by other NATO members without repeating the full tender. Juan Tarazona, Communications, Air and Missile Defence Programme Manager at NSPA, said the structure is “enabling the Spanish Air & Space Force to rapidly acquire a critical air navigation capability while benefiting from the Agency’s proven procurement and technical expertise,” as quoted in the Thales D-TACAN announcement.
NSPA applied exactly this logic two days ago when it established framework contracts with five suppliers for deployable counter-drone systems — the first major procurement step following NATO’s Ankara Summit commitment of more than $40 billion to counter-drone capabilities through 2031. The pattern is deliberate: qualify once, buy fast across the alliance. Traditional NATO procurement spans five to ten years from requirement to fielded capability. That timeline is incompatible with a threat environment where adversaries deploy new electronic warfare systems in months.
For the D-TACAN, the framework structure means that any of NATO’s 32 member states — particularly those operating from shared or coalition air bases in Eastern Europe, the Baltic region, or wherever the alliance stands up expeditionary capability — can now acquire a deployable navigation beacon under the same vehicle Spain used. No separate competitive tender, no duplicated qualification process.
How the D-TACAN Fits NATO’s Broader GPS-Resilience Investment
Thales’s D-TACAN sits at the deployed, operational end of the GPS-resilience spectrum, alongside technologies the alliance is developing for the longer term. The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory awarded Canyon Consulting $49.7 million in July 2026 specifically to mature alternative satellite navigation technologies, including quantum inertial sensors that have outperformed classical navigation systems 111-fold in GPS-denied flight tests, according to the Canyon Consulting alt-PNT contract. Xona Space Systems is building a Low Earth Orbit constellation (PULSAR) that broadcasts navigation signals 100 times stronger at the receiver than GPS, targeting initial commercial services in 2027.
Those are development-cycle investments. TACAN is a production capability. An expeditionary air base commander who needs GPS-resilient navigation for aircraft arrivals and departures today cannot wait for quantum inertial navigation to reach tactical scale or for a LEO constellation to reach full coverage. A 20-foot ISO container arriving by C-17 and spinning up in hours can solve that problem now, using technology whose reliability has been confirmed across 14 NATO air forces over decades.
EASA and European aviation authorities have repeatedly warned of degraded satellite navigation in airspace bordering active conflict zones — a condition that has become sustained and geographically broad, not episodic, according to EASA GNSS warnings on conflict-zone airspace. The operational decision to field deployable TACAN via an NSPA framework is NATO’s institutional acknowledgment that those warnings have translated into a procurement requirement.
A Note on TACAN’s Known Limitation
No analysis of TACAN’s GPS-denial resilience is complete without acknowledging its primary operational tradeoff: the system transmits continuously, and its signals are unencrypted. That means a hostile force in range of the beacon can use its transmissions for direction-finding — a capability that could help locate an expeditionary air base, a TACAN signal detectability limitation that is well understood in military navigation doctrine. Modern TACAN systems can operate in “Demand Only” mode, transmitting only when interrogated by an on-channel aircraft, which reduces but does not eliminate the signature. Thales specifies the D-TACAN as “cyber resilient,” a reference primarily to its digital control interfaces rather than its RF emissions. The siting and operational exposure of a deployed TACAN beacon remain a factor for tactical commanders to manage.
This limitation is well understood and long-established in military navigation doctrine. It is why TACAN is one layer of a multi-source navigation architecture, not its entirety — and why the D-TACAN is designed for expeditionary air bases where the beacon’s location is not a secret, not for covert forward positions.
Frequently Asked QuestionsWhat is TACAN, and why is a system from the 1950s still relevant for GPS-resilient military navigation in 2026?
TACAN — Tactical Air Navigation — provides aircraft with precise bearing and distance to a ground station using UHF radio pulses, operating between 962 and 1213 MHz. Its relevance in 2026 is precisely its age: the system operates on fundamentally different physics from GPS, using ground-based radio frequency signals at much shorter range and higher received signal strength rather than satellite broadcasts arriving at near-undetectable power levels. A GPS jammer cannot simultaneously jam TACAN without operating on different frequencies with different equipment. Modern military aircraft already carry TACAN interrogators alongside GPS and inertial navigation systems; the missing piece in expeditionary settings has been the ground beacon, which is exactly what the D-TACAN provides. The system’s 70-year track record in military aviation across 14+ NATO air forces is itself a reliability argument that newer technologies cannot yet match.
How does the NSPA framework structure benefit NATO allies beyond Spain?
The NSPA framework contract means that other NATO member states and NATO entities that share Spain’s technical and operational requirements for a deployable TACAN system can acquire additional units without running their own competitive procurement tender. In standard procurement, each nation must independently qualify suppliers, run a competition, and award a contract — a process that typically spans years. Under the NSPA framework, those steps are effectively pre-completed: Thales has been evaluated, the technical requirements have been specified, and a price mechanism is in place. An ally who identifies the D-TACAN as a gap in their expeditionary air base navigation capability can move directly to acquisition. This mirrors the mechanism NSPA used two days ago for counter-drone systems following NATO’s Ankara Summit commitment.
Can the D-TACAN system be used by civilian aviation as well as military aircraft?
TACAN range information is interoperable with civil Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) receivers, so civilian aircraft can use the range function of a TACAN beacon. However, the bearing function of TACAN is not interoperable with civilian VOR receivers — civil aircraft cannot determine bearing from a TACAN-only station without the appropriate TACAN avionics. The TACAN 553 platform does support dual military and civil navigation use, as stated in Thales’s product specifications. The D-TACAN system is designed and procured specifically for military use, but in a coalition or disaster-response scenario where the same expeditionary airfield supports both military and civil aircraft, the range function would be available to both.
Where does TACAN fit in NATO’s broader strategy for navigating in GPS-denied environments?
TACAN represents the deployed, operational layer of what military planners call a layered PNT (Positioning, Navigation and Timing) architecture. In a GPS-denied environment, a military aircraft’s inertial navigation system continues to track position but drifts over time without an external fix; a TACAN ground beacon provides that fix, resetting the inertial system’s accuracy for every aircraft that enters range. Higher-technology alternatives — quantum inertial sensors that track position without any external signal, and Low Earth Orbit constellations broadcasting navigation signals too strong to jam easily — are in active U.S. military development (the Air Force Research Laboratory awarded $49.7 million to Canyon Consulting in July 2026 to mature these technologies). Those investments cover the 2027–2031 timeframe. TACAN covers the problem today.