Armed with quantum sensors, France eyes leaps in electronic warfare

PARIS — The French Navy took delivery of its first serial-produced, quantum-technology sensor this year, a quantum gravimeter used for mapping the seabed, the head of the country’s defense innovation agency AID said. Future uses of such sensors could be for navigation or detecting enemy submarines.

The agency is also working with Thales on quantum sensors for electronic warfare that will allow monitoring of a broad swath of the electromagnetic spectrum, Patrick Aufort, the head of the agency, told Defense News at last week’s Eurosatory defense show in Paris. Those sensors will be available within the next five years, he said.

France in 2022 earmarked €1.8 billion, or U.S. $1.93 billion, to develop quantum technologies , a rapidly evolving field that exploits the laws of quantum physics to create new forms of computing, communication and sensing. Quantum gravimeters measure falling, laser-cooled atoms to detect tiny variations in gravitational pull, which could be used to detect the mass of an adversary submarine. There are no methods for submarines to shield themselves from such sensors, according to a 2020 policy brief from the European Leadership Network.

The gravimeter “is particularly useful for the first applications we’re doing here, mapping the seabed,” Aufort said. “But afterward, we can imagine other uses for the gravimeter, notably for positioning, notably for detecting the existence of a cavity on the seabed.”

French defense-procurement agency DGA has been funding work by the French national aerospace research office Onera on quantum gravimeters since 2006, with a first demonstrator in 2016. The office has worked with France’s Muquans, now part of the technology firm Exail, to industrialize the production of the gravimeter .

The second development France is working on is quantum-based, electronic-warfare sensors, which will allow for a higher probability of intercepting emissions in the electromagnetic spectrum, including radar and communications, according to Aufort.

“Quantum technologies allow you to have both a much better resolution on what you’re going to detect and, above all, to have instant detection over a very wide bandwidth,” Aufort said. “You have access to much greater bandwidths, and so a higher probability of interception, because emissions are in fact fleeting.”

Quantum-based electronic warfare sensors can use laser-cooled quantum bits that interact with any incoming electromagnetic waves, measuring tiny changes in a qubit’s quantum state. Today’s analysis relies on rotating through different bands to monitor the entire spectrum.

France is working in particular with Thales on such quantum sensors, which are “a question of, I’m not going to say months, but years, in the next five years,” Aufort said.

The head of the defense innovation agency said quantum computers are also a “question of years,” and they may be a mix of traditional high-performance computing with a quantum part. The DGA in March awarded contracts to five domestic computer research startups to develop technology that will allow France to have two universal quantum computer prototypes by 2032.

Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.

巴黎——法国国防创新局（AID）局长表示，法国海军今年接收了首台量产型量子技术传感器，这是一款用于绘制海底地图的量子重力仪。未来，此类传感器可能用于导航或探测敌方潜艇。

该机构还与泰雷兹公司合作研发用于电子战的量子传感器。该机构负责人帕特里克·奥福特在上周于巴黎举行的欧洲防务展上告诉《防务新闻》，这些传感器将能够监测大范围的电磁频谱。他表示，这些传感器将在未来五年内投入使用。

法国在2022年拨款18亿欧元（约合19.3亿美元）用于量子技术研发。量子技术是一个快速发展的领域，它利用量子物理定律创造新型的计算、通信和传感方式。量子重力仪通过测量激光冷却的下落原子来探测引力的微小变化，这可用于探测敌方潜艇的质量。根据欧洲领导力网络2020年的一份政策简报，目前潜艇尚无任何方法可以屏蔽此类传感器的探测。

奥福特说：“重力仪对于我们在这里进行的首批应用——绘制海底地图——尤其有用。但之后，我们可以设想重力仪的其他用途，特别是用于定位，特别是用于探测海底是否存在空腔。”

自 2006 年以来，法国国防采购局 (DGA) 一直资助法国国家航空航天研究机构 (ONERA) 进行量子重力仪的研究工作，并于 2016 年推出了第一个演示样机。该机构与法国 Muquans 公司（现为科技公司 Exail 的一部分）合作，实现了重力仪生产的工业化。

据奥福特称，法国正在研发的第二项技术是基于量子技术的电子战传感器，这将提高拦截电磁频谱（包括雷达和通信）辐射的概率。

“量子技术不仅能让你更精确地探测目标，更重要的是，还能在极宽的带宽范围内实现即时探测，”奥福特说。“你可以利用更大的带宽，从而提高拦截的概率，因为辐射实际上是转瞬即逝的。”

基于量子技术的电子战传感器可以利用激光冷却的量子比特，这些量子比特能够与任何入射电磁波相互作用，从而测量量子比特量子态的微小变化。目前的分析方法是通过轮换扫描不同的频段来监测整个频谱。

奥福特表示，法国正与泰雷兹公司合作研发此类量子传感器，“这不是几个月的问题，而是几年的问题，在未来五年内。”

法国国防创新局局长表示，量子计算机的研发也需要“数年时间”，它们可能是传统高性能计算与量子计算的结合体。今年3月，法国国防装备总局（DGA）与五家国内计算机研发初创公司签订合同，开发相关技术，使法国能够在2032年前拥有两台通用量子计算机原型机。

鲁迪·鲁伊滕贝格是《防务新闻》的欧洲记者。他的职业生涯始于彭博新闻社，拥有报道科技、大宗商品市场和政治方面的经验。