Advanced Navigation, a world leader in navigation and autonomous systems, for the world's most extreme environments, has announced the appointment of David Leniewski as Managing Director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Following a year of triple-digit growth, Advanced Navigation is scaling its deep-tech operations to meet surging demand for resilient navigation solutions across the region’s critical infrastructure and heavy industries sectors, including mining and marine.
The £1.4 Billion Problem Facing Commercial Operations
Across EMEA, reliance on standard Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) has become a critical vulnerability. Signal degradation, jamming, and spoofing are no longer just concerns for the defence sector, but daily operational hazards for commercial enterprises. Offshore vessels are losing positioning, autonomous mining fleets face costly downtime, and automated port logistics are being disrupted. IATA reported a 67% increase in jamming events from 2023 to 2025, while spoofing incidents rose by 193%.
With a GNSS outage estimated to cost the UK economy £1.4 billion every single day, the commercial stakes have never been higher.
Photo: Advanced Navigation
Speaking of the appointment, Advanced Navigation Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) Christopher McNamara believes Leniewski is the “right leader” for the “right moment”.
“The era of single-technology dependency is over. The question facing every program, every autonomous system integrator, and every critical infrastructure operator in the region is no longer if signal failure will affect them, but whether they will be ready when it does,” he said.
“With a track record of scaling dual-use technology across global markets, Leniewski brings a rare combination of operational credibility and commercial depth to the role. His time in the British Army gives him firsthand understanding of what resilient navigation means in contested environments - not as a systems specification, but as a lived experience. We are excited he’s joining us to translate that understanding into strong regional growth.”
The Right Leader for the Right Moment
Leniewski brings extensive leadership experience across aerospace, heavy industrials and high-reliability technology sectors, combining a foundational background in the British Army with senior commercial roles:
British Army: Served over a decade, gaining frontline operational experience and deep insight into defence requirements and mission-critical environments.
Smiths Interconnect: Served as Business Unit Director EMEA, leading regional strategy for high-reliability connectivity solutions across the medical, semiconductor, and aerospace sectors.
Moog & Ultra Electronics: Led sales and marketing strategies for high-value engineering programs across North-West Europe, including heavy ground vehicles, naval vessels, and security and surveillance platforms.
Amphenol: Focused on military-grade interconnect solutions for use across commercial aviation, defence, and space markets.
"The navigation industry has spent decades building on a single point of failure and calling it a system," said Leniewski. "Advanced Navigation is one of the few companies willing to say that plainly, and more importantly, to do something about it.”
“Its technologies are not just commercially relevant. They are foundational to how mining, marine, subsea and critical industries across EMEA will operate safely and autonomously in the years ahead. That is the work I want to be part of."
Advanced Navigation’s technologies are integrated into critical mining, marine, subsea and heavy industrial platforms across Europe.
Built for Extremes. Deployed at Scale
Leniewski's appointment follows Advanced Navigation's £83 million Series C raise, marking the next phase of the company's global expansion. The EMEA region sits at the intersection of rising electronic warfare threats, accelerating autonomous system adoption across mining, marine, subsea, heavy industries and defence, and growing government mandates for sovereign GNSS-independent navigation capability.
Advanced Navigation is meeting this demand head-on by embedding specialist engineering teams on the ground, building trusted regional capability, and expanding its sensor stack through targeted technology partnerships across robotics, photonics, vision, and quantum sensing.
The real-world power of its technology was proven in a landmark demonstration with mining giant BHP in Europe’s deepest underground mine. Operating 400 metres beneath the surface, Advanced Navigation’s Chimera Laser Velocity Sensor delivered exceptional precision that surpassed surface-level GPS accuracy. This performance marks a definitive leap forward for navigation in the most extreme environments on Earth.
"We are not just participating in the market," said McNamara. "We are defining what assured navigation looks like for the next generation of autonomous systems. Europe is central to that."
Founded on a culture of research and discovery, Advanced Navigation’s mission is to be the catalyst of the autonomy revolution. By transforming deep research into deployable systems, it is enabling humanity to operate with confidence in environments once considered unreachable.
