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Lockheed Martin Dark Ice: a quantum magnetometer geopositioning system
- tomsto 3y agoVery interesting, and amazing technology. But… How is it unjammable? Couldn’t you just generate a big magnetic field?
- tantony 3y agoMagnetic field drops off by an inverse-cubed law (as opposed to inverse-squared for RF). So it would be a lot more impractical to cover large volumes.
- tomsto 3y agoThanks. I would still be curious to know how the strength of an artificial magnetic field at a range of say 10 km compares to the order of magnitude of local variations they are talking about in the earth’s magnetic field.
- oldbbsnickname 3y agoMake some assumptions, find the relevant equations, and plug in the numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field
- eternityforest 3y agoIIRC I think there was a telephone system with giant magnetic coils that went a quarter mile, but maybe I read a blog wrong or something. In any case it wouldn't be as portable and would make you rather easy to detect I would imagine, if you wanted to cover a large area.
- dendrite9 3y agoThis looks like it might be in a similar vein to the navigation system discussed in a previous post about a new Royal navy test system. There are many good links in the comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36222625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36222625
- ncr100 3y agoThey also have made a very large and high tech scraping knife, to remove any jam. /Jk
- martinky24 3y agoNeat. Geopositioning in general is a "hard problem" especially with additional variables/complexities that are introduced for specific use cases (military or not). There's tons of room for cutting edge research here still, and it's exciting to see companies invest in that.
- mepian 3y ago(2019)
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoReading the article, it seems the real use case (unmentioned) is on ballistic missile nuclear subs. You want them to be well below the surface of the water, where the GPS signal does not penetrate so well. Thus having a way for them to know precisely where they are without relying on GPS would be very helpful.
- steve_gh 3y agoSo now they can run Red Route One at high speed. All they need now is to "Engadge je shilent drife"