Honeywell Aerospace successfully demonstrates Kestrel small EGI in flight, advancing resilient navigation for tactical drones

PHOENIX, Sep 15, 2026 — Honeywell Aerospace (Nasdaq: HONA) today announced the successful integration and flight demonstration of its Kestrel Small Embedded GPS/Inertial Navigation System (EGI) on an unmanned aircraft system, marking a significant development milestone for the company's next-generation resilient navigation solution designed specifically for small tactical drones.

The flight demonstration, using an off-the-shelf group 2 drone, validated Kestrel's ability to deliver positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) data by combining Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals with Honeywell Aerospace's proven HG3900 near-navigation-grade micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) inertial technology. The system is designed to provide reliable navigation performance for unmanned platforms operating in environments where satellite navigation signals may be degraded, denied, jammed or spoofed.

As military forces around the world increasingly rely on small, rapidly deployable unmanned aerial systems for reconnaissance, targeting, electronic warfare and other critical missions, demand is growing for resilient navigation technologies that can perform in contested environments. Traditional embedded GPS/inertial systems often exceed the size, weight and power requirements of tactical drones, creating the need for a compact alternative without sacrificing mission-critical performance.

"Kestrel was developed to provide resilient, military-grade navigation capabilities to platforms that are simply too small to accommodate traditional EGI systems," said Michael Jirjis, Defense Navigation Offering Management Director at Honeywell Aerospace. "This successful flight demonstration validates our approach and represents an important step toward delivering a new generation of assured navigation capability for tactical unmanned systems operating in challenging environments."

Kestrel is approximately 40% smaller and lighter than Honeywell Aerospace’s full-size EGI systems, enabling integration into a broader range of tactical unmanned platforms while meeting stringent size, weight and power requirements. The system combines Honeywell Aerospace’s HG3900 inertial technology with M-Code capability and multiple GNSS receivers to help improve navigation resilience when satellite signals are unreliable or unavailable.

The flight test also demonstrated integration of additional alternative navigation modalities, specifically navigating the unmanned platform using our vision navigation software and also using signals from low earth orbit (LEO) satellites.

The successful integration and flight testing also demonstrate the system's suitability for emerging unmanned platforms that require robust navigation performance but cannot accommodate larger legacy navigation systems and the addition of these alternative forms of navigation modalities enables a broader resilient navigation capability specifically designed to bring operational effectiveness in contested environments.

Honeywell Aerospace is continuing development of Kestrel and plans to conduct customer demonstrations next year. First deliveries are planned for late 2027.