Faced by the increased jamming of GPS satellite signals that guide military hardware as well as vehicles, airliners and ships, quantum technology is now providing an alternative.
Q-CTRL, a contractor to the U.S. government, told Newsweek its quantum sensors and the software that makes them usable would be deployed commercially later this year. Quantum technologies have not always lived up to the hype surrounding them, but they are now a priority for President Donald Trump’s White House and the Pentagon.
“The Trump administration is helping to ensure that adversaries are simply never able to catch up with U.S. leadership in the field, and Q-CTRL is working to make that vision a reality in partnership with the U.S. government,” said Michael Biercuk, the founder and CEO of the quantum tech company.
“The most pressing challenge that we have identified and have therefore focused on is this issue of interference with GPS,” he said during a recent interview.
“There are other applications of the technology, like underground target detection and magnetic anomaly detection, which is used in anti-submarine warfare. These are all things that are possible,” Biercuk continued.
NATO countries have accused Russia of jamming Global Positioning System signals, including those used by civilian aircraft and ships in alleged hybrid warfare. Russia has denied jamming GPS in civilian use, but maps of disruptions show heavy jamming over Ukraine during Russia’s invasion. GPS was first developed for the U.S. military but is now ubiquitous in civilian uses.
“There’s this, like, electromagnetic iron curtain that goes from Sweden and Norway all the way down to the Black Sea in Turkey,” Biercuk said. From a few dozen incidents a day in late 2023, the number of daily incidents is now over 1,000. Jamming is not restricted to Europe or to the actions of governments. Late last year, the port of Doha in Qatar was temporarily shut over GPS spoofing.
Quantum sensors based on Earth’s magnetic field and gravity provided the alternatives to GPS, Biercuk said.
Quantum physics describes the behavior of matter and energy at atomic and subatomic scales. But quantum technologies—including quantum computing and cryptography—have often fallen short of their promises because of technical hurdles, overhyped expectations and longer-than-anticipated timelines to practical deployment.
“The central problem in the technology is the same. It is that it’s very, very fragile,” Biercuk said.
How Does Quantum Technology Work?
Quantum sensors are based on trapped atoms and detect tiny shifts in magnetic fields or gravity, which can be measured with lasers.
“Our core innovations are in software,” Biercuk said. “We also build the sensors. In this case, we build the hardware. That’s more because by doing both at the same time, we can throw away bits of the hardware that we don’t need any more.”
Onboard quantum sensors are more complex than GPS systems, Q-CTRL said, but the signals can’t be jammed or spoofed and they do not depend on satellites that could be knocked out of action in the event of conflict. That makes them a backup to GPS and visual navigation. They are less susceptible to noise and interference than sound or light-based systems.
Q-CTRL was now working for the U.S. government on sensors for more challenging aircraft, such as helicopters that vibrate a lot, Biercuk said.
“They’ve contracted us to develop that technology and then validate it on those platforms. We also have a contract with Lockheed Martin and the Defense Innovation Unit for a new form of quantum navigation system that we’re jointly developing,” he said.
Q-CTRL’s partnerships also include ones with DARPA, Airbus and the Royal Australian Navy.
Other important applications of quantum computing were emerging in battlefield information management and optimizing logistics, Biercuk said.
China was also working on quantum technologies, he said, adding that where once there had been cross-border cooperation with Chinese scientists, the communication had now stopped.
“There are areas of strength in quantum in China; sensing and navigation are not one where there’s any known expertise or public statements,” Biercuk said. “It’s more on the communications side. How you use quantum physics to give security for information comms they’re very, very good at.”
Updated on 02/25/2026 at 9.53 a.m. ET with information on quantum systems complexity.
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