RoQS for a hard place: DARPA seeks radically more ‘robust’ quantum sensors for ‘inhospitable’ fieldwork
Quantum tech could provide high-precision alternatives to GPS for targeting or sonar for hunting submarines. But the same hyper-sensitivity that makes them such good sensors also makes them fatally vulnerable to interference – so far. A new DARPA program aims to change that.
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are developing a small vacuum chamber that could aid in non-GPS navigation. (Credit: Sandia National Laboratories)
WASHINGTON — The latest atomic clocks use quantum science to measure time to a trillionth of a second. In a lab setting, quantum sensors allow ultra-precise measurements.
But the Pentagon wants to take this new technology to the field, to navigate warzones without needing GPS or hunt submarines without using sonar, to put it on helicopters and jets and satellites, with all the vibration and radiation that entails. In those harsh environments, the same exquisite sensitivity that makes quantum tech such a good sensor also makes it extraordinarily vulnerable to interference, drowning the desired signal in irrelevant noise.
Past efforts to ruggedize quantum sensors have focused on taking today’s finicky lab tech and shielding it from interference: One might wrap a sensor in metal to shield it from electromagnetic radiation, for instance, or install it on a vibration-cancelling boom instead of in the body of an aircraft.
But in a new interview with Breaking Defense, Jonathan Hoffman, a program manager at the fringe-science-loving Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), argued that those kinds of Rube Goldberg fixes don’t address the underlying problem. Hoffman’s team is in the midst of a project, dubbed Robust Quantum Sensors or RoQs, that he hopes will discover a fundamentally new approach.
“We’re looking for ideas that don’t require what I call these ‘band-aid’ solutions,” Hoffman said. “Our hope is this is a philosophical, foundational change in how we build we quantum sensors. … Rather than saying ‘I’m going to shield away the problem,’ how do I, at the very beginning of my sensor design, think about all those interferences and figure out a way around [them]?”
That’s an extremely difficult problem, and the potential solutions can get esoteric. Some of the ones Hoffman described sound similar to the latest developments in quantum computers, which suffer a similar hyper-sensitivity to outside influences and are also looking for alternatives to brute-force shielding of a fundamentally fragile core.
They might require using different types of subatomic particles or finding new ways to “superimpose” quantum states of particles. But Hoffman made a point of not endorsing any specific method. “We didn’t pick one or the other,” he emphasized in the interview. “Any quantum sensor that can do the job … is on the table for us.”
The RoQS program had its public briefing for interested parties — from tech startups to government-funded labs — at the end of January, with initial abstracts due last week and full proposals by the end of March. Evaluating these complex scientific ideas will take a while, so Hoffman said he doesn’t expect to announce a list of winners or any specific dollar values until the end of summer.
The award announcements, expected in August, will kick off a 30-month initial phase. Each competitor will have to take their quantum sensor and get it to work on a helicopter. That’s not targeted at any particular Pentagon aircraft program, Hoffman emphasized. He picked that challenge because a helicopter in flight is one of the most inhospitable environments for any sensor, with vibration, noise, heat, and all sorts of other interference to test the technology. “There’s nowhere to hide,” he said.
Meanwhile, in parallel, Hoffman and his team will work with Pentagon programs that are interested in quantum sensing to see what technical requirements and constraints they have. Once the 30-month initial phase is over, he said, competitors who got their tech to work on the test helicopter will then have 12 months to work with one (or more) of those partner programs to tailor it to work on their specific weapons system.
“All this would be done in close partnership with various government entities to make sure we can bring this onto the right platform, integrate it there, and demonstrate the significant advantage these quantum sensors can bring,” Hoffman said.
This is not just a science experiment but an experiment in defense procurement as well, he said.
“Can we bridge the valley of death” between R&D and actual fielding, he asked. “If we can prove that the worst-case platform interference experience you can experience doesn’t matter to our sensors, then we’ve collapsed the TRL [Technological Readiness Level] chain.”
