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Quantum & Cyber / Navigation & Timing
DERECHO is developing sensor-fusion architecture for GNSS-degraded environments, with quantum and atomic references studied as candidate aiding inputs. Quantum-assisted, not GPS-independent, and not drift-free.
Alternative-PNT research · In development
The References
Satellite navigation is precise and free, and jammed, spoofed, and denied in every serious contest. A mission architecture that assumes GNSS is an architecture that fails on schedule.
Inertial navigation is sovereign: nothing outside the platform can deny it. But every inertial system accumulates error, and drift converts time-since-last-fix into position uncertainty.
Atomic references hold trustworthy time without a satellite. Timing is the least glamorous and most load-bearing input: fusion, networking, and navigation all stand on the clock.
Earth's magnetic field varies over position, a map that cannot be jammed. Map-referenced magnetic navigation is an active research field with real platform-noise challenges.
Gravity and its gradients form a second un-jammable field. Airborne gravimetric referencing remains a research problem; separating platform acceleration from gravity is the hard part.
The honest core of alternative PNT is not any single sensor; it is knowing, continuously, how good the estimate is and how fast it degrades without a reference.
The Architecture
Reference input
GNSS
When available, treated as an opportunity, never an assumption.
Reference input
Classical INS
Always present; drift grows with time since the last good reference.
Reference input
Quantum / atomic references
Candidate inputs under study: atomic timing, magnetometry, inertial and gravity references.
Edge fusion
PERCHState estimation designed to weight every reference by measured confidence, and to keep an honest error estimate when references disagree or disappear.
Mesh distribution
FORGEMESHPosition, time, and confidence metadata designed to move across the mesh so platforms can compare references, a classical network carrying quantum-derived data.
Operator confidence
The operator tier is designed to see uncertainty, not just position: how good the estimate is, which references feed it, and how fast it degrades.
Airborne Constraints
Each candidate reference pays an airborne tax. Atomic clocks degrade with vibration and temperature. Magnetometers fight the platform’s own field. Interferometric inertial sensors are laboratory instruments learning to fly. The navigation architecture has to be built for references that come and go, which is precisely the design philosophy DERECHO applies to networks, extended here to navigation.
The space tier shares the same backbone: precision timing is where the airborne architecture and the ASTERISM research thread meet.
Research and integration architecture. No quantum payload has been integrated or flown; descriptions on this page are design intent for systems in development. No navigation accuracy, holdover performance, GPS independence, or drift-free operation is claimed. 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.