Air Force Orders More Tests For ‘Jam Proof’ Quantum Navigation System

Sometime this year an Air Force C-17 will fly over a stretch of ocean without GPS in a test of a spoof and jam proof alternative to satellite navigation. In early September the Air Force and Honeywell Aerospace subsidiary Defense Innovation Unit flew an Embraer E170 for more than four hours between Seattle and Alaska using only the tiny gravitational anomalies in the earth’s crust to guide them. The system, called Quantum Sensing, was able to achieve 89 percent navigation accuracy over the featureless North Pacific, using the Earth’s magnetic field as an utterly unjammable signal as its source.

“This is a significant win for the department’s quantum sensing priorities, showcasing that MagNav capabilities are no longer a distant research goal,” Kyle Norman, deputy director of DIU’s Kill Web portfolio said in a news release after the Sept. 4 test. “We moved from problem sourcing to solicitation to prototype in a matter of months.” Interference has always been GPS’s Achilles heel and it’s now the first line of defense against an aerial attack but denial of that service is a serious threat to not only general aviation navigation but hundreds of other GPS-dependent systems.

September test was done using iPads, showing there’s no need for complex aircraft refits to adopt the system. The C-17 test will be a more detailed look at how military navigation can be made jam proof. “By proving that aircraft can maintain pinpoint accuracy over the featureless ocean without GPS, the War Department is taking a significant step toward ensuring that military and commercial pilots can safely reach their destinations, no matter what happens to the satellite networks above them,” the news release says.

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