The invention discloses a multi-unmanned vehicle cooperative navigation method based on data chain distance measurement. The method is suitable for unmanned vehicle formation collaborative navigationunder the satellite denial environment, the relative distance between the unmanned vehicles is measured by using a data chain, and the position of each unmanned vehicle node in the formation is estimated by using a multi-navigation sensor information fusion method. Each unmanned vehicle node in the unmanned vehicle formation carries an inertial navigation system, a vehicle odometer and a data chain transceiver, and the inertial navigation system and the vehicle odometer in each unmanned vehicle node are fused through a Kalman filter to obtain the speed, position and attitude information of each unmanned vehicle node; and the position estimation result of each unmanned vehicle is further optimized through equation constraint by using the distance information between the unmanned vehicles measured by the data chain. By the method, the navigation positioning accuracy of unmanned vehicle formation under the satellite denial condition can be improved.