The Royal Navy’s experimental / testbed submarine XV EXCALIBUR (built by MSubs in Plymouth under Project CETUS) has been tested at sea with Infleqtion’s quantum optical atomic clock. It is the first time a device of this king has been operated on an underwater vessel. This follows earlier, diverse trials the Royal Navy carried out with Quantum devices for precision timing and navigation aboard surface ships.  

Infleqtion’s clock, baptized TIQKER, has demonstrated precision timing onboard the extra-large uncrewed underwater vessel, proving reliable through multiple dives. The use of the ultra-accurate, unjammable timing ensured by a laboratory-grade time reference device enables accurate navigation in the absence of vulnerable GPS or other outside signals.

The clock can provide a steady “time heartbeat” smoothing out the noise that causes navigation drift, enabling precision navigation over prolonged periods of time without access to outside world signals. The ultra-precise timing of a quantum clock also provides precise onboard reference for other critical submarine systems such as sonar, fire control, and secure communications, improving mission performance.

The XV EXCALIBUR, along with the surface ship XV PATRICK BLACKETT, are key “floating laboratories” being used to shape the Royal Navy future plans in terms of autonomous systems and high-tech solutions. It is hoped EXCALIBUR will lead more or less directly to the anticipated “Type 93 CHARIOT” uncrewed submarine imagined as part of Project CABOT / ATLANTIC BASTION for a persistent ASW barrier in the North Atlantic.

The development of TIQKER had been revealed publicly early in 2025 with the first tests outside of a laboratory environment. Operational applications of TIQKER were, at the time, planned to materialize within 5 years.

While the main interest was for its use in remote radar-based positioning, tracking, and targeting applications, it was reported the clock would also be used in support of identifying, tracking, and targeting one-way attack (OWA) UAVs and UAV swarms.

The UK has a national programme to develop a ground-based PNT alternative to GPS and other jammable satellites, and quantum clocks will probably play a key role. The “enhanced LORAN (eLoran)” solution is a positioning system that uses a network of ground-based transmitters operating within the 90–110 kHz low-frequency band.

The core eLoran system as described all the way back in a 2007 paper by the International Loran Association  comprises “modernized control centers, transmitting stations and monitoring sites. eLoran transmissions are synchronized to an identifiable, publicly-certified, source of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) by a method wholly independent of GNSS. This allows the eLoran Service Provider to operate on a time scale that is synchronized with but operates independently of GNSS time scales. Synchronizing to a common time source will also allow receivers to employ a mixture of eLoran and satellite signals.

The principal difference between eLoran and traditional Loran-C is the addition of a data channel on the transmitted signal. This conveys application-specific corrections, warnings, and signal integrity information to the user’s receiver. It is this data channel that allows eLoran to meet the very demanding requirements of landing aircraft using non-precision instrument approaches and bringing ships safely into harbor in low-visibility conditions. eLoran is also capable of providing the exceedingly precise time and frequency references needed by the telecommunications systems that carry voice and internet communications”.

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