What if we told you you were walking around, every day, with a critical piece of battlefield tech in your pocket? Well, according to Zephr, you are.
The Colorado-based company has developed software that transforms mobile phones into Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) jamming detectors, capable of geolocating sources of electronic warfare (EW). Today, it announced a $1.74M Direct-to-Phase II SBIR grant from the Air Force Research Lab to further advance the technology, with the goal of integrating it into the DoD’s Tactical Assault Kit and the Department of Homeland Security’s Team Awareness Kit.
“Everywhere you go, everybody has an Android phone. If you can throw some software on an Android phone and be able to crowdsource this, it gives you great economies of scale,” Sean Gorman, CEO of Zephr, told Tectonic.
Electronic warfare: Zephr began as a commercial venture, enhancing GPS performance in “urban canyons” and other challenging environments. Its technology uses networked mobile devices to improve navigation and geolocation when signals are weak or disrupted.
Then, a group from Ukraine reached out, asking if the company could adapt its mobile phone-based tech to counter Russian jamming.
“They were having a lot of issues with medevacs and things along those lines,” Gorman said. In early 2024, his team began testing and collecting data in Ukraine, leading to the development of its “networked GNSS” technology.
- Through this testing, the company discovered that not only could they help Ukrainians maintain positioning and communications in contested environments, but they could also pinpoint the source of jamming signals with high accuracy.
- That capability allowed operators to either navigate around the jammers—or, if possible, eliminate them.
- The software can also help autonomous systems navigate in contested environments and avoid EW signals. Gorman told Tectonic his team has tested it on drone swarms in Ukraine.
Field test: So far, Gorman said the software has demonstrated a high degree of accuracy across various environments in Ukraine and Israel. Under the SBIR contract, Zephr will conduct further testing on the frontlines in Ukraine and during US military exercises before the technology is deployed on DoD devices.
The company is also looking to test in Taiwan, where experts anticipate significant adversarial jamming in any potential future conflict.