If GPS system is completely disable what kind of weapon and sensors can still be used?

[WatcherZero]

Submarines nowadays take a sonar image of the seafloor and compare that to their charts to correct for inertial drift but the Royal Navy has been trialling a Quantum gyroscope thats 1,000 times more accurate than a laser ring and only drifts by 1 meter every 24 hours. Its the size of a mini fridge though and reliant on freezing Rubidium gas to near absolute zero (where quantum effect kicks in and the Rubidium atoms stop acting as individual particles and instead act as a wave) so I doubt it will be miniaturised enough to work on missiles.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Submarines nowadays take a sonar image of the seafloor and compare that to their charts to correct for inertial drift but the Royal Navy has been trialling a Quantum gyroscope thats 1,000 times more accurate than a laser ring and only drifts by 1 meter every 24 hours. Its the size of a mini fridge though and reliant on freezing Rubidium gas to near absolute zero (where quantum effect kicks in and the Rubidium atoms stop acting as individual particles and instead act as a wave) so I doubt it will be miniaturised enough to work on missiles.

Got any more details on that quantum gyro?

 

[Byeman]

Submarines nowadays take a sonar image of the seafloor and compare that to their charts to correct for inertial drift but the Royal Navy has been trialling a Quantum gyroscope thats 1,000 times more accurate than a laser ring and only drifts by 1 meter every 24 hours. Its the size of a mini fridge though and reliant on freezing Rubidium gas to near absolute zero (where quantum effect kicks in and the Rubidium atoms stop acting as individual particles and instead act as a wave) so I doubt it will be miniaturised enough to work on missiles.

A gyro only measures attitude. It does not measure position, An INS has gyros and accelerometers. It is the accelerometers that do most of the position sensing.

 

[Byeman]

Terrestrial/airborn radio beacons can replace GPS with lower cost and higher power, with only problems of coverage. At tactical ranges, unless you need a full passive solution it should be the easiest and cheapest option I'd think.

Nah, there is no replacing GPS. TACAN, VOR ands LORAN are all shells of themselves.

 

[Kat Tsun]

eLORAN eternally getting kicked down the road meanwhile Chayka just chugs along.

 

[WatcherZero]

A gyro only measures attitude. It does not measure position, An INS has gyros and accelerometers. It is the accelerometers that do most of the position sensing.

Accelerometers only work in 2D, they can measure duration and force of acceleration to calculate distance of travel but are wildly inaccurate for measuring direction of travel, particularly when a craft has full freedom of movement across all planes, thats why you have Gyroscopes. The fun thing with a quantum gyroscope though is you dont need separate accelerometers as the probe laser can measure both direction and acceleration simultaneously from the same atom cloud.

 

[Firefinder]

Can you point me to any current systems so I could learn more?

They all basically cheap modern version for Satallite positioning, specifically cubesats. And work very similar to the star tracker on the like of ICBMs.

You can buy one for bout 5k to 35k depending the model and how long you want it to last in space.

Theres also star tracking programs you can get for you phone that recognize the stars just by pointing the camera at the night sky.

Lots of small things that make me believe that a modern A-INS be very small, simple, and cheap to make. Smarter people then me could likely make one out of an old smart phone since those have all types of gyros in them for measuring angles.

 

[Byeman]

Accelerometers only work in 2D, they can measure duration and force of acceleration to calculate distance of travel but are wildly inaccurate for measuring direction of travel, particularly when a craft has full freedom of movement across all planes, thats why you have Gyroscopes. The fun thing with a quantum gyroscope though is you dont need separate accelerometers as the probe laser can measure both direction and acceleration simultaneously from the same atom cloud.

This is so wrong. There are at least 3 in every INS and they measure in all 3 axis. These are very accurate in any direction. This is what every rocket, missile, launch vehicle and spacecraft have. And I said they are paired with gyros in an INS.

Quantum gyros do not exist commercially nor do they sense acceleration (motion)

 

[WatcherZero]

Atomic Gyroscopes

The Technology

www.nist.gov

NIST scientists are exploiting the effects of inertia on the atomic scale to develop exquisitely sensitive, intrinsically accurate motion sensors.

Initially, atoms are cooled and trapped within a glass vapor cell. When the trap is turned off, the atoms begin to expand outward and are excited by laser beams that put each atom into two quantum states at the same time. As the atoms disperse and interact while the cell is in motion, the atoms’ states change differently depending on the direction and strength of the forces caused by rotation or acceleration of the cell.
Each atom’s two quantum states can be imagined as rippling waves. The waves of the atoms reinforce or cancel each other out at various points in the cell to form new interference patterns. This interference determines the atom’s final quantum state and appears as “fringe” patterns projected onto a detector. From those patterns, researchers can deduce acceleration in one direction and rotation in two directions.

Quantum sensor for a future navigation system tested aboard Royal Navy ship | Imperial News | Imperial College London

A prototype quantum sensor built at Imperial, with potential application in GPS-free navigation, has been tested in collaboration with the Royal Navy.

www.imperial.ac.uk

 

[Scott Kenny]

Atomic Gyroscopes

The Technology

www.nist.gov

Quantum sensor for a future navigation system tested aboard Royal Navy ship | Imperial News | Imperial College London

A prototype quantum sensor built at Imperial, with potential application in GPS-free navigation, has been tested in collaboration with the Royal Navy.

www.imperial.ac.uk

Sounds like the NIST sensor works a little bit differently than the Imperial one.

You'd still need 3x units mounted at 90deg to each other to cover the full sphere of movement, and the need for cryogenic cooling complicates matters for reducing the size of the overall package.

 

[Forest Green]

Quantum navigation system successfully trialed in UK flights

London, UK (SPX) May 13, 2024 - The UK has successfully completed commercial flight trials of a new quantum-based navigation system, designed to be immune to jamming or spoofing by external threats. These trials mark a significant

www.spacewar.com

GMV Secures GBP 2 Million Contract for Quantum-Enabled White Rabbit Switch to Safeguard UK Infrastructure

London, UK (SPX) Aug 10, 2024 - GMV has been awarded a GBP 2 million contract by Innovate UK to develop the White Rabbit Switch, an advanced hardware solution designed for fiber-optic time distribution. This technology is crucial

www.spacewar.com

Researchers Develop Advanced Silicon Photonic Chip for GPS-Free Navigation

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 14, 2024 - Inside devices like smartphones, fitness trackers, and virtual reality headsets, small motion sensors track movement. Larger, more sophisticated versions of these sensors, about the size of a grapef

www.spacewar.com

US Air Force working with SandboxAQ to enhance AQNav GPS protection

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 17, 2024 - SandboxAQ has secured an SBIR Phase 2B Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) from the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to advance its AQNav magnetic navigation (MagNav) system. This funding will allow SandboxAQ an

www.spacewar.com

 

[Forest Green]

TrustPoint Secures $3.8M in SpaceWERX Direct-to-Phase II Contracts

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 22, 2024 - TrustPoint has been awarded two Direct-to-Phase II contracts by SpaceWERX, valued at a combined $3.8 million. These contracts are aimed at advancing the company's GPS-independent ground control segm

www.spacewar.com

 

[Forest Green]

GPS Without Space? DOD Looks to Quantum for an Answer

The Department of Defense is looking to the extraordinary capabilities of quantum sensing technology to find alternatives to GPS.

www.airandspaceforces.com

 

[yahya]

If GPS is disabled, could the introduction of eLORAN be a remedy? Could this old venerable system with some modern anti-jam updates of its transmission protocols effectively substitute the GPS in the future? LORAN was used on aircraft in Nam for navigation and weapons delivery.

 

[WatcherZero]

UK MoD is currently engaging with industry on an eLORAN system. But the understanding is its future role would be a domestic airspace backup, it wouldn't be suitable for an offensive role as the enemy could spoof it.

 

[Rule of cool]

What's the status of the old long range navigation systems like LORAN-C? IIUC there's been a bit of renewed interest in eLORAN as a backup to GPS and I think there are still TACAN beacons at airfields, but what else is out there that could be added to on-board INS to increase the accuracy of navigation over longer ranges.

As an aside, what happens to INS when an aircraft receives and update from an outside navigation reference like GPS or eLORAN? Does the INS reset as if it was in the hangar at home base, and drift starts again.

 

[WatcherZero]

No they dont alter its output. The aircraft/weapons computer will judge which it considers a more reliable out of available sources of INS/GPS/terrain imaging on a weighting system, and if they drift too far apart it will disregard one. E.g. If there was a slow drift of a few cm in GPS compared to INS it would consider the GPS more reliable, but if the GPS position suddenly jumped several km in less than a minute it would likely consider the INS data more reliable. If the GPS and terrain imaging positioning were closely aligned but the INS was suddenly way off it would disregard the INS, etc..

 

[Forest Green]

NATO eyes solar-powered high altitude platforms to counter GPS jamming - Breaking Defense

Separately, a Ukrainian official told Breaking Defense that Kyiv's forces are constantly having to evolve their cyber and electronic warfare tactics to stay ahead of Russia.

breakingdefense.com

 

[Scott Kenny]

As an aside, what happens to INS when an aircraft receives and update from an outside navigation reference like GPS or eLORAN? Does the INS reset as if it was in the hangar at home base, and drift starts again.

Effectively, yes that's what happens normally.

You get a new fix that's more accurate than what your INS can be so you tell the INS "now at this location, restart positional drift".

I'm not solid on the details at the inside-the-box level, but operationally you reset the position and restart counting drift.