Engineers turn to quantum tech to replace GPS in flight navigation

[Skye Jacobs]

Forward-looking: As reliance on satellite navigation grows, aviation faces rising risks from GPS jamming and spoofing. Disruptions – whether from hostile actors or technical failures – threaten commercial and military flights. Engineers are racing to develop resilient alternatives, with promising new technologies moving from labs into the skies.

Airbus has teamed with SandboxAQ, a Silicon Valley company specializing in artificial intelligence and quantum sensing, to field-test a new approach to navigation. Their collaboration focuses on quantum-sensing devices, specifically the MagNav system. This compact instrument reads subtle magnetic cues from the Earth's crust to pinpoint an aircraft's location, even when satellites fail.

For more than 150 hours of flight across the continental United States, Airbus subsidiary Acubed's "flight lab" test aircraft carried MagNav aloft. The navigation system measures the unique magnetic "fingerprints" beneath each stretch of terrain and cross-verifies those signals against detailed magnetic maps using onboard AI. The result: location fixes that reliably meet – and sometimes surpass – the Federal Aviation Administration's standards for in-flight precision.

SandboxAQ CEO Jack Hidary told the Wall Street Journal that while additional testing and certifications are needed before the technology sees widespread adoption, early results are promising and represent a turning point.

"The hard part was proving that the technology could work," Hidary noted. "It's the first novel absolute navigation system to our knowledge in the last 50 years."

Traditional GPS relies on signals broadcast from orbiting satellites – a system that, while robust, is increasingly vulnerable to disruption. Spoofing broadcasts false location data from the ground to deceive onboard receivers, while jamming overwhelms signals to disable navigation systems. Once rare, these attacks now occur regularly in global hotspots, affecting thousands of flights and posing a serious risk to civilian aviation.

Quantum sensing offers a fundamentally different approach. Unlike GPS, which transmits digital, hackable data, quantum magnetic sensors are "essentially unjammable and unspoofable." All measurements occur inside the aircraft, with data derived solely from the Earth's naturally occurring and immutable magnetic fields.

The system works by firing a photon from a laser that strikes an electron, which then absorbs and re-emits the photon as it relaxes. The energy signature from this process reflects the local magnetic field strength – information unique to every square meter of Earth's surface. MagNav's AI interprets this signature and matches it to reference maps, converting raw quantum measurements into usable location data.

In recent flight tests, MagNav consistently maintained positional accuracy within two nautical miles 100 percent of the time. Perhaps even more impressive, it achieved even finer precision – within 550 meters in most cases – often outperforming competing inertial systems without satellite aid.

The potential of quantum sensing extends far beyond aviation. Beyond securing navigation, quantum sensors could aid national defense by detecting hidden objects like submarines or underground tunnels, and improve medical diagnostics by sensing weak magnetic signals from the heart or brain, according to Joe Depa, Ernst & Young's Global Chief Innovation Officer. Furthermore, this technology is not years or decades away.

"We're not talking about something 20 years out," Depa said. "This is here and now."

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Engineers turn to quantum tech to replace GPS in flight navigation

 

[NumberNine]

Just like a boid in the sky.

 

[NotYourITguy]

I have very serious doubt on the claimed anti-jam ability of this tech. Sounds good in theory, but it's not a new concept and was pretty heavily researched in the early 2000s by major defense contractors. Pretty safe bet there already exists a proof of concept countermeasure sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

 

[p51d007]

"jam proof". Yeah, and "bullet proof" vest are 100%

Any piece of hardware/software can be jammed/spoofed/taken over. Just depends on how
much time you are willing to spend trying to do it.

 

[scoffer]

Then don't forget to put all your data/findings etc.etc. online -with a passsword of "123456" or "password" so that the Chinese/Russian/ North Koreans can avail themselves of it....

 

[Liljonny11]

"immutable magnetic fields" is an oxymoron. The ability to influence the earths magnetic field in a localized area is a matter of energy not possibility

 

[Scshadow]

Within 550 meters you say? Seems underwhelming from a non-expert like me. Seems like at 550 meters, it probably is not going to replace GPS navigation in something like a long range missile. I'd sure hate to miss a runway by 550 meters. Maybe some other senser is supposed to get you there once you are 550 meters away? You can definitely rule out geocaching if the error rate is +-550 meters.

 

[daffy duck]

Given the earth's magnetic poles are due to flip, probably in the next few thousand years, they aren't immutable. In fact since the magnetic north pole was first measured in 1831 it has moved 960km already and the rate of movement is accelerating.

 

[Burty117]

Within 550 meters you say? Seems underwhelming from a non-expert like me. Seems like at 550 meters, it probably is not going to replace GPS navigation in something like a long range missile. I'd sure hate to miss a runway by 550 meters. Maybe some other senser is supposed to get you there once you are 550 meters away? You can definitely rule out geocaching if the error rate is +-550 meters.

No you're right, but when you consider the speed a plane travels at (an average of 600mph), a plane covers 550 meters in roughly 2 seconds.

 

[toooooot]

So, new unjamable drones soon?

 

[mbk34]

Haven't we been measuring differences in the Earth's magnetic field for decades? and from satellites? Or is this the first time anyone's tried adding the word quantum to the method? I take it nano was already taken?

 

[Tom Yum]

GPS can be accurate to less than 1m, so 550m seems more than two orders of magnitude worse. Secondly, the earth's magnetic field is constantly changing, so it is unclear how they compensate for that, unless they need to keep updating a locally stored database of the earth's magnetic field from a satellite feed, which creates a vulnerability not discussed.

Lastly, modern INS can have drift rates as low as 150m/hr without GPS augmentation, so while GPS can be jammed, it would need to be jammed for hours (and therefore 1000's of kms) to equate to the accuracy of this. A modern INS with GPS augmentation only needs to establish a GPS lock every few hours to maintain an accuracy greater than the 550m reported. Modern INS is largely immune to GPS spoofing because they can sense when the INS and GPS locations no longer match, and given INS drift is generally constant, it is easy to identify when the GPS signal is incorrect and ignore the positional data provided.

 

[mbrowne5061]

I have very serious doubt on the claimed anti-jam ability of this tech. Sounds good in theory, but it's not a new concept and was pretty heavily researched in the early 2000s by major defense contractors. Pretty safe bet there already exists a proof of concept countermeasure sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

I had a similar thought. Throw up a strong magnetic field, and is this system smart enough to disregard it? Or insensitive enough to not even notice unless its a obscenely strong field?

Within 550 meters you say? Seems underwhelming from a non-expert like me. Seems like at 550 meters, it probably is not going to replace GPS navigation in something like a long range missile. I'd sure hate to miss a runway by 550 meters. Maybe some other senser is supposed to get you there once you are 550 meters away? You can definitely rule out geocaching if the error rate is +-550 meters.

No you're right, but when you consider the speed a plane travels at (an average of 600mph), a plane covers 550 meters in roughly 2 seconds.

GPS can be accurate to less than 1m, so 550m seems more than two orders of magnitude worse. Secondly, the earth's magnetic field is constantly changing, so it is unclear how they compensate for that, unless they need to keep updating a locally stored database of the earth's magnetic field from a satellite feed, which creates a vulnerability not discussed.

Lastly, modern INS can have drift rates as low as 150m/hr without GPS augmentation, so while GPS can be jammed, it would need to be jammed for hours (and therefore 1000's of kms) to equate to the accuracy of this. A modern INS with GPS augmentation only needs to establish a GPS lock every few hours to maintain an accuracy greater than the 550m reported. Modern INS is largely immune to GPS spoofing because they can sense when the INS and GPS locations no longer match, and given INS drift is generally constant, it is easy to identify when the GPS signal is incorrect and ignore the positional data provided.

They compare this new system to inertial navigation systems, not GPS. Only this (and other) articles compare this technology to GPS. When GPS is jammed or spoofed, planes don't suddenly become lost, they fall back to an inertial navigation system that is calibrated against either the plane's starting location or last-known location per GPS (usually starting location, because if your GPS gets spoofed, how do you know when and where you last good location was at all?)

Inertial navigation systems suffer from what is called an "integration error"; the further they travel from their starting location, the lower their precision gets. Notably, the article leaves out the travel distances here. But let us just assume it is 100KM for argument's sake: for 100KM of travel, the traditional inertial navigation system had an accuracy of around 3,700 meters (approximately 2 nautical miles), while this new quantum system had an accuracy of around 550 meters (or better). This means the quantum system was 6x as accurate as the traditional inertial navigation system. That should help a flight navigate to outside of a GPS jamming or spoofing zone and get closer to their destination landing field without risking being low on fuel due to navigation errors (because we all know commercial carriers are putting the absolute minimum amount of fuel needed these days; extra fuel weight = extra fuel burn = extra costs = less profit for shareholders)

But the points about magnetic field drift seem like potentially valid ones. If we're pointing it out on a non-aviation forum, hopefully the engineers at this company have already addressed it or think they have a good way to go about addressing it.

 

[Tom Yum]

I had a similar thought. Throw up a strong magnetic field, and is this system smart enough to disregard it? Or insensitive enough to not even notice unless its a obscenely strong field?





They compare this new system to inertial navigation systems, not GPS. Only this (and other) articles compare this technology to GPS. When GPS is jammed or spoofed, planes don't suddenly become lost, they fall back to an inertial navigation system that is calibrated against either the plane's starting location or last-known location per GPS (usually starting location, because if your GPS gets spoofed, how do you know when and where you last good location was at all?)

Inertial navigation systems suffer from what is called an "integration error"; the further they travel from their starting location, the lower their precision gets. Notably, the article leaves out the travel distances here. But let us just assume it is 100KM for argument's sake: for 100KM of travel, the traditional inertial navigation system had an accuracy of around 3,700 meters (approximately 2 nautical miles), while this new quantum system had an accuracy of around 550 meters (or better). This means the quantum system was 6x as accurate as the traditional inertial navigation system. That should help a flight navigate to outside of a GPS jamming or spoofing zone and get closer to their destination landing field without risking being low on fuel due to navigation errors (because we all know commercial carriers are putting the absolute minimum amount of fuel needed these days; extra fuel weight = extra fuel burn = extra costs = less profit for shareholders)

But the points about magnetic field drift seem like potentially valid ones. If we're pointing it out on a non-aviation forum, hopefully the engineers at this company have already addressed it or think they have a good way to go about addressing it.

Except if you had read my actual post you would have seen that I am referring to INS when I talk about drift rates of 150m per hour which modern INS can achieve without GPS integration. Sure, eventually an INS drift error could exceed 550m, but you are talking after 3.5 hrs of flight. Practically, it is nearly impossible to jam a GPS signal over the >1000's kms that a plane would travel in that time, which means an INS would establish a GPS lock and address the drift error well before the error exceeded 550m.

Is it a cool idea? Sure, but even in GPS contested environments it is well behind existing technology.

 

[ThomasTECH]

Much easier to read the earth's attributes closer to the surface, in the upper atmosphere at high speeds the readings are lowest quality. This idea is facing a serious challenge here. I like ideas that sound good from the beginning. Not wow that sounds counterintuitive, let's try it anyway. Might find some reasonably useful data in the process of whiffing the goal here.

 

[umeng2002]

I wonder if this is related to the British Navy, I believe, doing quantum inertial navigation for submarines and ships. It's too large for active use, but promises the same thing. High accurate, unjammable positioning.

 

[Angga B]

"earth's immutable magnetic fields". Really, noone can "mutate" the whole earth fields but one can try to mutate one small part of earth where the receiver is located with strong and focused EMF beams, the exact same method they did with GPS today.

 

[Angga B]

Within 550 meters you say? Seems underwhelming from a non-expert like me. Seems like at 550 meters, it probably is not going to replace GPS navigation in something like a long range missile. I'd sure hate to miss a runway by 550 meters. Maybe some other senser is supposed to get you there once you are 550 meters away? You can definitely rule out geocaching if the error rate is +-550 meters.

550m ~ 1800 feet. Assume the level accuracy applies to x, y and z axis then say goodbye to air travel for the flight path slots are divided every 1000 feet.