DARPA entangles BAE Systems in quantum technology for military antennas

Update: December 12, 2023

DARPA entangles BAE Systems in quantum technology for military antennas

The goal is to break constraints to antenna designs that have persisted for more than a century, says BAE Systems, reducing size, and increase sensitivity and accessible bandwidth by several orders of magnitude.

According to the company, a quantum approach to aperture development can decouple the size of the antenna from the wavelength of the incoming signal. This can reduce the size and number of antennas on Department of Defense platforms.

The work will be carried out in the USA, at BAE Systems’ FAST Labs, the R&D facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire (pictured).

“While still in the early development phase, quantum sensing relies on fundamentally different physics than conventional antennas,” said Julia MacDonough, product line director at BAE Systems.

“This may allow us to circumvent traditional aperture design limits for sensitivity and size. As a result of these programs, BAE Systems’ FAST Labs will be at the forefront of quantum sensing to support the warfighter.”

Quantum technology

The FAST Lab has previously highlighted that it has achieved the generation of entangled photons in the lab (changing the properties of one photon so that it will simultaneously change a remote, separate photon without any delay – “spooky action at a distance,” as Einstein sceptically called it).