UK Develops Quantum Clock To Cut Military GPS Dependence (www.gov.uk)
- Reference: 0175817901
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/02/1733235/uk-develops-quantum-clock-to-cut-military-gps-dependence
- Source link: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/top-secret-lab-develops-atomic-clock-using-quantum-technology
The UK-built device aims to reduce military reliance on GPS technology, which can be disrupted by adversaries. It will be deployable in military operations within five years, supporting navigation systems, encrypted communications, and advanced weapons systems. The $34.6 million project involves partners including Infleqtion UK, Aquark Technologies, and Imperial College London. The clock was tested outside laboratory conditions for the first time in collaboration with the Royal Navy and Army Futures team.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/top-secret-lab-develops-atomic-clock-using-quantum-technology
lose less than one second over billions of years (Score:5, Funny)
And how many times will it have to be adjusted for daylight saving during that period?
Re: (Score:2)
I believe they refer to it as "British Summer Time" over there.
Clear As Mud! (Score:3)
Well, that article is as clear as mud. Nowhere does it explain how a more precise clock can eliminate the need for satellite navigation which, it correctly points out, is vulnerable to jamming. If I put an extremely accurate clock inside a box and then move it to the other end of the street, how would it figure out (without external jammable signals) that I have done so?
Perhaps more accurate clocks on the satellites would help, but I get the impression that current GNSS inaccuracy is dominated by atmospheric propagation errors rather than clock accuracy. However, the article seems to imply that these wonder clocks will be deployed on the thing which needs to do the navigating (tank, ship etc). Some of the other points are also rather suspect, for example:
Enhance the accuracy of advanced weapon systems, like guided missiles, which rely on accurate timing to calculate trajectories and coordinate attacks.
Just how well damn coordinated do these attacks need to be? Surely, current clocks can organise for your missiles to arrive at the target sufficiently close together?
...especially in areas like cyber warfare, where milliseconds can make a difference.
Surely we already have clocks that can remain accurate to milliseconds over the duration of a typical war?
Re: Clear As Mud! (Score:1)
You don't get it bro - we're merely moments away from being able to chronosphere strike teams into secure locations anywhere in the local system. Our elite hackers will literally have faster clocks than the enemy, so all things being equal, our packets will get there first! It is well know that whoever gets there first wins, especially if you include the new "dibs" flag which we hope to have in mass production by 2027. Someday maybe even individual soldiers will carry these quantum clocks and like Prince of
Re: (Score:3)
> Well, that article is as clear as mud. Nowhere does it explain how a more precise clock can eliminate the need for satellite navigation which, it correctly points out, is vulnerable to jamming. If I put an extremely accurate clock inside a box and then move it to the other end of the street, how would it figure out (without external jammable signals) that I have done so?
I suspect this is not about navigation, but rather is about using GPS for time purposes. If you've ever worked in a data center, you know that a lot of them get their time from GPS receivers so that there's a local clock that is always correct. That ensures that certificate issuance always has an accurate timestamp, etc. When time absolutely has to be correct, you want a really accurate clock that is completely reliable.
Some sites also have atomic clocks (real ones, not WWV radio receivers), but those ar
Re: (Score:2)
> I suspect this is not about navigation, but rather is about using GPS for time purposes. If you've ever worked in a data center, you know that a lot of them get their time from GPS receivers so that there's a local clock that is always correct.
This. GPS can give you your space-time location in all four dimensions. Of course, the altitude typically isn't used in civilian applications, nor is the time. But those values are all there to be measured. You can thank the presence of atomic clocks on the GPS satellites for all of this.
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>> Of course, the altitude typically isn't used in civilian applications, nor is the time.
> Wait, what? Both are regularly used in civilian applications. GPS is uses for a lot more than car navigation.
Yeah, fair enough. I should have said personal applications, for which the only one really is 2d navigation.
wot, no i time axis? (Score:2)
Get a load of these primitives, they only have four dimensions and only one of them is time. You should have invested in buying a better quality universe from the start.
How are you going to outflank your adversaries if you only have one dimension of time?
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> I suspect this is not about navigation, but rather is about using GPS for time purposes.
I think you're probably correct here. Reading the article again it looks like it is all about accurate time-keeping rather than navigation as such.
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Except the UK has long had a time service. Time as a utility was something the UK has decided since the early 20th century as an essential service. They had many ways to obtain it including leased line services to their time servers.
Nowadays, NTP and GPS are traditional ways to synchronize time, but the UK still has a time service.
The Royal Institution gave a talk about time as a utility - it's kind of long but an interesting talk all about time and how the UK provided time services
[1]https://www.youtube.com/w [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrMB1c5MJ14
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If you're running a datacenter and depend on that level of time synchronization, a few thousand for an atomic clock is pocket change.
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> When time absolutely has to be correct, you want a really accurate clock that is completely reliable. Some sites also have atomic clocks (real ones, not WWV radio receivers), but those are relatively expensive, IIRC.
That's just not an issue anymore. If you need clocks as accurate as GPS then you can buy them for about $500 - literally the same timing technology and accuracy as actual GPS except without the transmission induced jitter.
You absolutely need accurate clocks. We've had the technology for this purpose for 30 years already. There's no indication at all why the military would need to develop a fancy new thing, especially since they are talking about becoming independent of something that in the grand schemes of
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> f I put an extremely accurate clock inside a box and then move it to the other end of the street, how would it figure out (without external jammable signals) that I have done so?
True, for inertial navigation you also need extremely precise linear and angular accelerometers onboard, but you also still need precise time.
Or, what if you wanted to do phase-aligned beamforming from distributed transmitters at different locations and trajectories, to focus energy a point? For comms, or directed energy, or
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quantum clocks means that inertial navigation goes from several miles drift over time and functionally useless to actually practical with GPS precision. Quantum clocks allow you to build atomic inertial sensors can measure gravity variations of a part in a billion. This occurs because of the propagation of wave packets between two beam splitters and the beam splitters themselves. The ïrst stage is achieved through the ABCDξ theorem which gives the evolution of a general wave packet in the ca
A Guess (Score:2)
> If I put an extremely accurate clock inside a box and then move it to the other end of the street, how would it figure out (without external jammable signals) that I have done so?
Just a guess but with portable accurate clocks you only need to time the reception of a simple ping which could easily be part of a local, ground-based network making it a lot harder to jam than the GPS signal which contains lots of data about the satellite sending it and is transmitted over a long range making it much easier to spoof or jam.
You cannot do anything without external signals regardless of how accurate your clock may be.
Time dilation and relative frames? (Score:2)
I wonder how expensive the technology will be. Having one's stuff synced tightly can help a lot. However, as stuff moves around, the clocks will shift their value relative to how fast it has been going, with a clock hitching a ride on a 747 being slightly behind one that has been on the ground, due to time dilation.
The hard part will be keeping the clocks in sync over time, as which clock is the "master"?
This is used alongside quantum INS/compass (Score:2)
For those curious, in order for INS to work well you need an accurate clock, this is what is likely to be used alongside it.
A number of nations are testing "quantum" INS at the moment where they measure atoms instead of the old method of a spinning gyroscope or accelerometer etc.
I would expect extremely accurate systems out of this.
I'm a nerd for this stuff (Score:2)
I don't really understand what additional accuracy will meaningfully do for jamming here, but I'm excited to learn. We have NTP, PTP, and if push comes to shove, we can physically send clocks powered by chip-scale atomic oscillators by USPS or even larger ones by truck. Feels like jamming isn't really a huge problem. I ultimately view cheap CSACs as the GPS-independent enabler for the future. Things like 5G and eventually-consistent cloud infra are making these high-end oscillators cheaper and cheaper. Cur
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It is about precision navigation. "Quantum clocks" are not really needed, old-fashion precision quartz with temperature control would do it basically as well if synchronized at the start of a mission. But it is larger, more expensive and draws more power, is sensitive to mechanical shock and overall less robust. Hence this is merely an optimization of existing tech and not a great story. I guess it only ran because of "military" and "quantum" in the title.
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With temperature control you wouldn't need to synchronise at the start of a mission, just once a year will about do it. But in any case we already have more accurate systems available. Rubidium oscillators come in PCB mount formfactor and cost a couple of hundred dollars and are as accurate as atomic clocks ... because they are atomic clocks (though the least accurate of the 3 currently on the market).
but (Score:2)
it will be late
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> it will be late
Since it's quantum, that won't be determined until you've measured it. And then it might be your fault.
John Harrison who created the marine chronometer w (Score:3)
Itâ(TM)s like history repeating itself. The British did exactly this same thing (improve clock for navigation in 1735).