Lost Under the Sea

Late last year, the Royal Navy tried something new.

It loaded a quantum optical clock onto one of its uncrewed submarines and sent it down on multiple dives.

The clock worked.

“This experiment was a first critical step towards understanding how quantum clocks can be deployed on underwater platforms to enable precision navigation and timing,” said Commander Matthew Steele of the Royal Navy’s Disruptive Capabilities and Technologies Office.

Now, a clock might sound like a strange thing to get excited about.

But it’s literally the heartbeat of the ship.

Remember, a submarine may be the most dangerous weapon in any navy, but it’s also the most secluded.

Lost in the darkest deepest recesses of the ocean, where GPS signals can’t reach.

The moment a sub dives, it’s on its own.

It effectively has to guess where it is, using gyroscopes and accelerometers that start drifting the minute they’re switched on.

But those instruments get a little less accurate every hour they spend underwater.

And eventually, the boat has to come up near the surface to get a fix.

Of course, surfacing and giving away its location is something a submarine wants to avoid at all costs. 

That’s why an optical clock that ticks at the frequency of an individual atom, a frequency that never changes, is such a big deal.

Pair a clock like that with quantum motion sensors and a submarine could cross an ocean without once asking a satellite where it is.

The Clock Is Ticking

The Royal Navy has good reason to hurry.

British officials estimate that a single day without GPS would cost the U.K. economy more than $1 billion.

The Navy has also taken quantum navigation sensors into the Arctic for field trials with Imperial College London.

That tells you how seriously they’re taking it.

Meanwhile, back home, the threat keeps growing.

When the war with Iran started on February 28, more than 1,100 ships in the Persian Gulf had their GPS jammed or spoofed, according to Windward.

Some showed up sitting at an airport. Others showed up on land.

Then, in April, the Space Force cancelled a $6.27 billion upgrade to GPS ground control after a decade of delays, calling its problems “insurmountable.”

So the U.S. and its allies are all converging on the same conclusion.

They need navigation that doesn’t depend on a satellite.

And what works deep under the ocean works everywhere else, too.

From the Ocean Floor to Orbit

A clock that holds its time in a submarine can do the same in a drone flying through a jamming zone.

Or in a cruise missile.

Or in a satellite that has to coordinate with a constellation of others while an adversary tries to scramble the link.

The company that built the clock for that Royal Navy test makes a lot more than clocks.

It also builds the quantum motion sensors.

It’s building a quantum gravity sensor for NASA.

It has contracted defense programs in three allied nations for a new kind of atom-based radio sensor built to shrug off the jamming that cripples conventional electronics.

All of it runs on the same technology: single atoms, held in place by lasers and cooled to just above absolute zero.

That’s the full navigation stack from one small company.

A Defense Insider Hiding in Plain Sight

This company has been doing work for DARPA for more than a decade.

It holds more than 230 patents, issued and pending.

Its revenue more than doubled last quarter compared with a year ago.

It has more than half a billion dollars in cash and no debt.

And the Commerce Department just signed a letter of intent to invest up to $100 million in it, taking stock at a discount in return.

Yet most investors have never heard of it, because it only started trading this year.

However, you can get all the details right here in my latest report.

I suggest you do, because unseating GPS as the basis for all the world’s navigational needs is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime profit opportunity.