GPS spoofing is getting a Canadian counterweight: a $20.3M quantum hub in Calgary where the military, industry and academia will build navigation tools that do not depend on satellites.
The Department of National Defence is funding the two-year effort at the University of Calgary, a cleared facility where teams can work on quantum technology behind security barriers.
The hub’s to-do list targets three worries: positioning without satellites, catching fake GPS broadcasts, and quantum-secure links and clocks. A spoofed signal mimics a satellite transmission to nudge an aircraft or ship off course, and the department expects the hub to shrink those weaknesses in contested environments.
Funding splits across four streams: quantum sensing, quantum communications, quantum algorithms and quantum hardware assurance, the last checking that a device does what its maker claims. Navigation gains come mostly from the sensing stream, where atom-scale instruments can lock a position with no signal arriving from orbit.
The defence minister, David McGuinty, said the technology will shape the military’s next chapter and that Canada must help write it rather than watch.
