VectorNav Technologies

VectorNav Technologies builds MEMS-based inertial sensors and inertial navigation systems out of Dallas, Texas. The company was founded in 2008 and has stayed narrow on purpose. It makes inertial measurement units, attitude and heading reference systems, and GNSS-aided inertial navigation systems, and it sells them to systems integrators rather than fielding complete platforms of its own. More than 100,000 units are in service with over 5,000 customers across more than 60 countries, which for a company of its size says most of what needs saying about where it fits in the supply chain.

The catalogue is best read as a grid. One axis is what the device does. VN-100 is a standalone IMU and AHRS combining three-axis accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers with a barometric pressure sensor, producing calibrated inertial data and a real-time three-dimensional attitude solution through a full range of motion. VN-200 adds a high-sensitivity GNSS receiver and a Kalman filter, so it outputs position and velocity as well as attitude. VN-300 moves to two GNSS antennas, which lets it hold accurate heading without relying on vehicle dynamics or a magnetometer, a distinction that matters on slow-moving or stationary platforms and on anything working near steel or high current.

The other axis is grade. VN-100, VN-200 and VN-300 are the industrial line. VN-110, VN-210 and VN-310 are the tactical-grade equivalents, built with higher-performing sensors and offered either as compact surface-mount parts or in a ruggedized housing. The tactical dual-antenna VN-310 uses a multi-band L1, L2 and E5b receiver. The practical consequence is that an integrator can prototype on an industrial part and move up to the tactical part later without rewriting the interface, and that portability is a large part of why VectorNav turns up in so many unmanned programs.

The customer base spans aerospace, defense, marine, industrial and commercial work. On the defense side that means unmanned aircraft and ground vehicles, surveillance and mapping payloads, antenna and sensor pointing, and platform navigation in cases where a navigation-grade fiber-optic or ring-laser system would be too heavy, too expensive or too tightly export-controlled. VectorNav has generally competed on size, weight, power and cost rather than on raw drift performance against the high-end inertial houses, and its tactical line was the move upmarket from that starting position.

Manufacturing and calibration are done in house, and the company holds AS9100D and ISO 9001 certification. Units are fully calibrated before shipping, which is a meaningful part of what a buyer is paying for with MEMS parts, since uncalibrated MEMS sensors drift badly with temperature and the aerospace-grade digital filtering the company markets depends on that calibration being right. In 2025 VectorNav acquired a 100,000 square foot facility in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to expand production, a direct response to demand from autonomous systems programs on both the defense and commercial sides.

The company remains privately held and does not publish revenue or headcount. It is a specialist component supplier rather than a prime, and the fair reading is that it is one of a small handful of Western sources for tactical-grade MEMS inertial navigation at drone and small-vehicle scale.