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Quantum Sensing / Resilient PNT / Mission Cyber
DERECHO is developing the integration architecture required to move selected quantum sensing, timing, and communications technologies from controlled environments into airborne and space mission systems.
Conceptual illustration · AI-generated · Notional depiction of a research objective, not a built or fielded system. No quantum payload exists, and none has flown.
The Problem
Quantum sensing is real physics with laboratory results that classical sensors cannot match: atoms make exquisite magnetometers, clocks, and inertial references. But the same sensitivity that makes a quantum sensor remarkable makes it fragile. Vibration blurs interference. Temperature detunes references. The platform’s own motors and currents drown the field being measured.
Government research programs identify exactly this gap. Robust, platform-ready quantum sensors are the open problem. DERECHO’s position in that landscape is deliberate: not inventing new quantum devices, but developing the airborne platform, edge fusion, mission network, and operator architecture that selected quantum technologies will need the day they leave the bench.
Airframes shake; interferometers and vapor cells resent it.
Temperature swings and gradients move optics and detune references.
The platform's own motors and currents contaminate the measurement.
The sensor must distinguish mission signal from its own dynamics.
Fused sensing is only as good as the time base beneath it.
Laboratory instruments must shrink to payload-bay reality.
Precision achieved on a bench must survive launch, flight, and recovery.
Raw quantum-derived observations must become mission-relevant estimates at the edge.
Integration Architecture
Six layers between a quantum measurement and a mission decision. DERECHO is developing the architecture that connects them.
01
Candidate modalities under study; no payload integrated.
Candidate quantum sensing modalities. Selected, not invented, by DERECHO.
Airborne carriage, power, isolation, thermal control, and calibration environment.
03
Classical estimation today; quantum-derived inputs are a research vector.
State estimation and multi-sensor fusion at the edge, under human supervision.
Moving measurements, timing, confidence, and identity across a degraded mesh.
05
OVERWATCH
Ground / operator tier of the mesh architecture, in development.
Presenting confidence, uncertainty, and anomaly context a human can act on.
Extending timing continuity and relay concepts beyond the air layer.
Navigation & Timing
GNSS is precise, free, and contested. Inertial navigation is sovereign but drifts. Quantum and atomic references, clocks, magnetometers, interferometric inertial sensors, are studied across the research community as aiding sources that could slow that drift and hold trustworthy time without a satellite.
DERECHO’s alternative-PNT research treats these as candidate inputs to a fusion architecture: PERCH weighting every reference by confidence, FORGEMESH distributing time and position with provenance, and the operator seeing honest uncertainty instead of a false fix.
Navigation & TimingAtomic timing motif, illustrative, notional.
Field Sensing
RF wavefront and atomic probe motif, illustrative, notional.
Magnetic and radio-frequency fields carry mission information that classical receivers reach only with size, power, and antennas. Research techniques, atomic vapor and NV-center magnetometry, Rydberg-atom RF sensing, measure those fields at the atomic scale, with calibration traceable to physics itself.
DERECHO studies these as candidate airborne payload classes: what platform isolation, timing, and fusion architecture they would need aboard STRIX, and how their observations would move across the mesh. This is not “quantum radar,” and no detection performance is claimed.
Quantum SensingSensor Fusion
No single modality survives every environment. Magnetic references fail near the platform’s own noise; timing holds through jamming but not forever; optical needs sky. The value is in fusion; magnetic, inertial, timing, RF, gravity, and optical observations weighted into one state estimate that knows its own error.
That fusion layer is software DERECHO is already developing for classical sensors. Extending it to quantum-derived inputs is the research vector that ties this section to PERCH.
Field contours and anomaly motif, illustrative, notional.
Mission Cyber
A future quantum computer breaks the public-key cryptography most missions run on today, and adversaries can record traffic now to decrypt later. For autonomous systems with decade-long lives, post-quantum migration is a design requirement, not a future concern.
DERECHO’s mission-security work centers on crypto agility, migration architecture toward NIST post-quantum standards, device identity, and signed software across the FORGEMESH mesh. Post-quantum cryptography, quantum communications, and quantum key distribution are three different things; this page family keeps them separate.
Mission SecurityAlgorithms designed as replaceable components.
Architecture oriented on NIST-standardized post-quantum algorithms.
Continuous authentication for platforms, sensors, and operators.
Long-lived mission data treated as already at risk.
Air-Space Continuity
Timing, relay, and trust concepts developed for the airborne layer are designed to extend to the developmental ASTERISM orbital tier, one continuity thread from sensor to space.
Development Roadmap
01
Establish the platform, fusion, network, and operator architecture with classical sensors.
02
Define mechanical, electrical, thermal, timing, and data interfaces for candidate quantum payloads.
03
Integrate candidate components with edge compute and fusion software in controlled conditions.
04
Vibration, thermal, and electromagnetic engineering toward flight-representative conditions.
05
Ground vehicles and captive carriage before free flight.
06
Flight evaluation of hardened payloads on the STRIX platform.
07
Multiple platforms sharing quantum-derived observations over the mesh.
08
Extending timing and relay experiments toward the ASTERISM architecture.
Sequence of intended development stages. No dates are attached and no completion is promised; progression at every stage depends on evidence from the stage before.
Research Areas
Airborne integration of compact quantum sensor payloads
Multi-modal fusion of quantum-derived and classical observations
Resilient timing distribution across a DDIL mesh
Quantum-assisted alternative-PNT concepts for GNSS-degraded environments
Crypto-agility and post-quantum migration for mission networks
Free-space optical and quantum-communications research for air-space links
Confidence and uncertainty presentation for operators
Environmental hardening of laboratory-grade instruments
Go Deeper
Why fielding a quantum sensor is harder than building one, and the platform architecture aimed at that gap.
View
Quantum-assisted alternative-PNT research for environments where GNSS is degraded or denied.
View
Six candidate modalities; magnetic, RF, inertial, gravity, timing, optical; each stated at its honest maturity.
View
Crypto agility and post-quantum migration architecture for autonomous mission systems.
View
Timing continuity and quantum-communications research toward the ASTERISM orbital tier.
View
Public Limitations
Research and integration architecture. No quantum payload has been integrated or flown; descriptions on this page are design intent for systems in development. DERECHO is a private company. Nothing on this website implies endorsement, sponsorship, approval, certification, or affiliation by the United States Government, the Department of Defense, any military service, or any government agency.
Contact
Quantum sensor developers, laboratories and universities, government research organizations, and component suppliers; DERECHO welcomes integration conversations at the research stage.
Quantum sensing, quantum communications, quantum key distribution, quantum computing, and post-quantum cryptography are distinct disciplines. DERECHO's work in this area is research and integration architecture for systems in development; descriptions reflect design intent, and no quantum capability, performance, certification, or compliance is claimed.
