UK Develops Quantum Clock To Cut Military GPS Dependence (www.gov.uk) 42
Britain's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory has developed a quantum atomic clock that will lose less than one second over billions of years, the Ministry of Defence announced on Thursday.
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.
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.
John Harrison who created the marine chronometer w (Score:5, Informative)
Itâ(TM)s like history repeating itself. The British did exactly this same thing (improve clock for navigation in 1735).
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?
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I believe they refer to it as "British Summer Time" over there.
Clear As Mud! (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Surely we already have clocks that can remain accurate to milliseconds over the duration of a typical war?
Re: Clear As Mud! (Score:1)
Re:Clear As Mud! (Score:4, Informative)
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 are relatively expensive, IIRC.
This is a third option, presumably more expensive than a $50 GPS receiver, but cheaper than a couple of grand for an atomic clock.
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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)
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
https://www.youtube.com/w [youtube.com]
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This is all because the UK was kicked out of Galileo on security grounds after Brexit hit.
No other timing system offers nanosecond level accuracy and widespread coverage.
There have been attempts to use other systems, like AM radio carriers and the old LORAN system, but they suffer from being ground based waves, and from lack of interest outside the UK where everyone uses satellite.
Current efforts centre around trying to null out errors of waves travelling over the ground on a per site basis, to get to the s
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Beidou seems to provide pretty precise time information at least in Australia.
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As so Galileo, GPS, and GLONAS. But none of them are controlled by the UK government so it's a national security issue. The EU, or China, or the US, or Russia, could degrade the service with no notice or consultation, and there would be nothing we could do. They could even introduce subtle errors to disadvantage us.
We also don't have access to the military parts of the signals, which are en encrypted.
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Except the UK has long had a time service.
Easy as 123. "At the third stoke, the time will be ..."
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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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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.
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It can make the GPS spoofing attempt much more difficult. Since location and time are derived from the GPS signal a jammed signal will show wrong location AND wrong time unless parameters can be rather carefully juggled. It may not get you back on path; but, it will alert you to use alternate navigation tools due to time errors. Any new jammers will be more complex and more expensive. And, of course, they will come.
{^_^}
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Because the article is written by morons, er, I mean journalists.
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:3)
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)
Re:I'm a nerd for this stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
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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.
That really depends on whether that temperature control is always-on (think missiles and drones that are not powered when stored). But it is a minor factor as crystals age slowly and in predictable fashion. For cryptography (Kerberos), tolerances in the order of seconds are acceptable. Agree on the Rubidium clocks.
Which means this story is pretty much non-news.
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Ahhh yes in the case of stored off equipment I agree, that would absolutely need time syncing at mission start. You can't run an OCXO from a button cell battery.
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I didn't say Chip Scale. I said PCB Mount. Virtually all rubidium oscillators used for ages in everything from every base station in every mobile phone tower is a small device usually about 2x2x2" in dimensions mounted right on the circuit board. They've long been available for under $1k. Heck they are cheap enough that I have one laying in my parts bin here complete with associated circuitry to discipline an insanely fucking accurate 10MHz clock. This stuff is cheap, trivially available, and more than enou
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It depends on the accuracy you need. The speed of light becomes your enemy when using cheap oscillators. Light travels at pretty close to 1' per nanosecond. Clocks drift that 1 nanosecond pretty quickly. With 86400 seconds in a day a single day's drift of a 1ppm oscillator will be as much as 0.09 seconds. That means inside of a day your time error translates to about 16 miles. This can be dealt with for short missions and 1000' CEP requirements. Precision weaponry talks about errors in the single digit feet
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I imagine them caring about longer-term non-mission jamming, or simply warfare taking out the satellites completely. Otherwise like you I don't understand why atomic clocks are even relevant to the story.
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>I don't really understand what additional accuracy will meaningfully do for jamming here
It will enable fantastically accurate inertial navigation systems that don't suffer from significant coordinate drift. Once initially calibrated, they will not need any further external signals to maintain accuracy.
It means you could be in a building, deep in a mine, in an area under heavy military GPS jamming or spoofing, all the GPS satellites could be blown out of the sky... and you (or a missile) would still be
but (Score:2)
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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.
A Quantum clock measures time so precisely (Score:2)
... that you can never locate it.