A tactical air navigation system, commonly referred to by the acronym TACAN, is a navigation system initially designed for naval aircraft to acquire moving landing platforms (i.e., ships) and later expanded for use by other military aircraft. It provides the user with bearing and distance (slant-range or hypotenuse) to a ground or ship-borne station. It is from an end-user perspective a more accurate version of the VOR/DME system that provides bearing and range information for civil aviation. The DME portion of the TACAN system is available for civil use; at VORTAC facilities where a VOR is combined with a TACAN, civil aircraft can receive VOR/DME readings. Aircraft equipped with TACAN avionics can use this system for enroute navigation as well as non-precision approaches to landing fields.
The typical TACAN onboard user panel has control switches for setting the channel (corresponding to the desired station's assigned frequency), the operation mode for either transmit/receive (T/R, to get both bearing and range) or receive only (REC, to get bearing but not range). Capability was later upgraded to include an air-to-air mode (A/A), where two airborne users can get relative slant-range information depending on specific installations,[1] though an air-to-air mode allows distance to be established between transmitters/receivers. Note: A TACAN only equipped aircraft cannot receive bearing information from a VOR-only station.
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