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XV Excalibur Royal Navy

The successful demonstration of a quantum optical atomic clock onboard the Royal Navy‘s Extra Large Uncrewed Underwater Vehicle (XLUUV), XV Excalibur, marks a major technological milestone. With this ground-breaking experiment, a high-precision quantum gadget of this kind has never been used at sea in an underwater vessel.

During the trial, the testbed submarine was equipped with Infleqtion’s Tiqker quantum clock. The Submarine Delivery Agency’s Autonomy Unit team, the Royal Navy, the UK quantum company Infleqtion, and the submarine’s manufacturer, MSubs Ltd., were all involved in the cooperative endeavour. Developed as part of Project CETUS, the 12-meter-long, 19-ton displacement XV Excalibur is a crucial testbed for autonomous capabilities.

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Why Underwater Quantum Clocks Are Necessary

Submerged vessels are isolated from dependable Global Positioning System (GPS) signals, making navigation a constant issue for both crewed and uncrewed submarines. Internal inertial navigation systems (INS) are used by submarines to monitor their movements. The conventional microwave-based atomic clocks that control these systems, however, suffer from a small amount of “drift” over time, which results in cumulative errors in the estimated position of the vessel. The sub’s position becomes less precise as a result of these timing inaccuracies, and after days or weeks underwater, it may reach an error of several kilometers.

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The Benefit of Quantum

With its incredibly accurate timing, the Tiqker quantum clock provides a potent remedy by successfully removing the noise that contributes to navigation drift.

• Principle of Operation: The basic idea behind quantum optical atomic clocks is that they use light (optical) frequencies to measure time. Compared to the microwave frequencies utilised by traditional caesium or rubidium clocks, these frequencies are orders of magnitude greater (hundreds of thousands of times higher).
• Unmatched Precision: The accuracy is greatly enhanced by this high frequency. The most accurate GPS clocks available today are only 100 times as accurate as a quantum optical clock. It offers stability on par with a time reference of national laboratory quality.
  • For instance, the Tiqker optical clock may drift only 1 nanosecond (ns) over the same period, which is a thousand times better than the typical naval-grade caesium clock, which may drift by roughly 1 microsecond (μs) every day.
• Mechanism: By employing lasers to capture and cool a cloud of neutral atoms to almost absolute zero, the clock minimizes motion and gets rid of background noise. Because of its accuracy, the quantum clock can smooth out the noise that leads to navigation drift by producing a constant “time heartbeat.”

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Strategic Consequences and Importance

The Royal Navy can now do more thanks to the incorporation of the Tiqker clock:

• Extended Covert Operations: The quantum clock reduces the requirement for the submarine to surface for sporadic GPS fixes by significantly lowering navigation drift. This improves stealth by enabling autonomous submarines to stay underwater, precise, and undetected for much longer periods of time.
• The experiment was considered “a first critical step towards understanding how quantum clocks can be deployed on underwater platforms” in order to enable precise PNT, which is necessary for extended operations, especially in situations where GPS is not available.
• Mission Effectiveness: Tiqker’s accurate “time heartbeat” serves as an internal reference for other vital submarine systems, such as sonar, fire control, and secure communications, in addition to inertial navigation, enhancing overall mission performance.
• Quantum Operational Advantage: The Royal Navy will have a “quantum operational advantage” in its next underwater operations through testing.

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Additionally, the testing showed that the Royal Navy could quickly create and incorporate payloads onto uncrewed host platforms. This skill is seen to be crucial for anticipating and responding to adversary capabilities. On board XV Excalibur, more experiments and testing of quantum-based navigation systems are anticipated.

The Royal Navy will have a “quantum operational advantage” in next underwater operations because to this development. There are plans for more testing and benchmarking of quantum-based navigation systems on board XV Excalibur and possibly other platforms. A complete quantum navigation suite might someday be created by integrating clocks with additional quantum sensors (for acceleration, magnetic, or gravitational fields), possibly completely replacing GPS.

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