US Develops ‘Mother of All Motion Sensors’ to Counter GPS Jamming in War Zones
And it might show up in Ukraine sooner than you think.
As a former journalist, I still get press releases regularly sent to my inbox – my email address is doomed forever to exist on distribution lists at Muck Rack and Cision.
But I don’t mind. It gives me a quick read every morning on topics that I find interesting – especially on the global security beat – directly from the source.
Last month, I got a news release from Sandia Labs in New Mexico that made my ears perk up.
Sandia Labs is owned by the US government and is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. But it’s managed by a subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc. – a longtime US defense contractor.
Now, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories created a motion sensor so precise that it could greatly reduce reliance on GPS. As you might imagine, this could have big implications for numerous industries – especially defense.
In a major leap forward, scientists at Sandia have created a next-gen quantum motion sensor designed to operate without GPS. Dubbed “the mother of all motion sensors,” this device could drastically reduce the US's reliance on GPS in combat zones where signals are often jammed or spoofed by enemy forces.
“Navigation in real-world scenarios becomes a huge challenge when GPS is compromised or unavailable,” says Sandia’s lead scientist, Jongmin Lee.
What makes this sensor revolutionary is its foundation in quantum mechanics. The team at Sandia has leveraged atom interferometry, a cutting-edge quantum sensing technique that measures motion with unprecedented precision.
This technology promises to offer unmatched accuracy in tracking acceleration and angular velocity, even in places where GPS simply doesn’t work—think subterranean environments or zones of intense electronic warfare – like Ukraine.
By building these sensors using tiny silicon photonic microchips, Sandia’s scientists have dramatically improved both performance and miniaturization.
These sensors, once confined to large apparatuses, can now fit on much smaller platforms. “By utilizing the unique properties of quantum mechanics, we’ve achieved navigation capabilities that were previously unimaginable,” adds Lee.
One of the keys to this breakthrough is the development of a new high-performance silicon photonic modulator.
It’s essentially a chip-scale laser system.
In simple terms, a modulator controls the characteristics of light—specifically, its frequency. But traditional modulators come with a catch: they create unwanted "sidebands," essentially light’s equivalent of audio echoes.
These sidebands interfere with the signal, reducing accuracy. Enter Sandia’s new modulator, which cuts these unwanted frequencies by a jaw-dropping 47.8 decibels, (typically a unit of measure for sound, but also applicable to light intensity) reducing them by nearly 100,000 times.
“The implications are huge. This kind of reduction in interference isn’t just technical—it’s practical,” the research team stated in their press release.
The new modulator is the centerpiece of a laser system on a microchip. Rugged enough to handle heavy vibrations, it would replace a conventional laser system typically the size of a refrigerator.
Here’s where it gets even more interesting: the technology isn’t just better, it’s cheaper.
Typically, quantum sensors and the laser systems they rely on are expensive to build and deploy, with a single commercially available modulator costing upwards of $10,000. But by miniaturizing these components onto silicon photonic chips, Sandia has slashed costs dramatically.
“We can now make hundreds of these modulators on a single wafer, just like computer chips, and that drastically reduces the price,” explains Sandia scientist Ashok Kodigala.
This cost reduction paves the way for mass production, making these advanced quantum navigation systems more accessible and scalable for both military and civilian uses.
While GPS-independent navigation is the obvious headline, the applications of this technology go far beyond war zones.
This breakthrough could revolutionize sectors like underground resource detection, where traditional GPS fails. It also has potential in LIDAR systems, which are critical for autonomous vehicles, as well as in the fast-growing fields of quantum computing and optical communications.
Kodigala and his team are actively exploring these broader uses, and their ultimate goal is to create a compact, cost-effective quantum compass that can be deployed across a range of industries. “We’re pushing the boundaries of miniaturization and expanding this tech into diverse applications,” says Kodigala.
But my interest is in using this tech in defense applications – especially after we’ve now seen successful Russian jamming of US munitions like the Excalibur artillery shell.
Indeed, Russia is no slouch in the area of electronic jamming.
GPS jamming uses a frequency transmitting device to block or interfere with radio communications, usually by broadcasting signals from the ground that are stronger than satellite-based signals – which are far away and weak.
GPS spoofing is just as bad if not worse – Spoofing might involve one country's military sending false GPS signals to an enemy plane or drone to hinder its ability to function and is often considered more dangerous than jamming.
Perhaps most alarming, GPS jamming, once so expensive that it was confined to nation-state actors, is now available to nearly everyone. A $25 Chinese-made jammer, found Alibaba, can block the GPS signal around a car, while a two- or three-watt jammer the size of a cigarette pack, available for a couple of hundred quid, could mask several city blocks.
In one example of how common these jammers have become over the last decade, in 2013 a New Jersey truck driver who wanted to hide his location from his boss used a civilian GPS jammer that inadvertently jammed air traffic at Newark Airport every time he drove by. Whoops…
Authorities located the driver and hit him with a $32,000 fine by the Federal Communications Commission.
As recently as 2015, military leaders, policymakers, and defense experts lamented our dependence on GPS for the military. In an interview with Defense News, Al Simon, navigation systems marketing manager for Rockwell Collins, once said, “There is no magic bullet that can replace GPS.”
Well, there is now, Mr. Simon.
Until now, the US defense community has been desperately looking for either augmentation to munitions’ primary navigation systems, hardening current GPS against interference, or looking for something that's non-GPS.
They now have their non-GPS answer.
Russia can’t jam or spoof a miniature quantum sensing compass. And that’s exactly what the big brains at Sandia have developed.
No doubt, the Department of Defense is all over this news – waiting eagerly to slap a ‘Top-Secret’ label on this technology.
But it will be some time before these ultra-precise motion sensors start showing up in US munitions like the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) or Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), both of which heavily rely on GPS for targeting.
Russia and China have both invested heavily in disrupting the US military connection with its military and civilian GPS satellites. From jamming on the ground to creating anti-satellite missiles to hit our communications in the event of war.
This is a good example of the US military recognizing a vulnerability and funneling resources into a long-term fix.
Ultimately, this technology will be distributed out to US allies across Europe and the Pacific. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw this appear on the Ukrainian battlefield sooner than one might expect.
US defense contractors have already sent several experimental systems to test in Ukraine, like AM General’s Soft Recoil artillery piece.
What better place to test this motion sensor’s capability than on an active battlefield against Russia, with the bonus that Ukraine gets its hands on cutting-edge tech even before US troops.
Precision targeting has been US military doctrine for the better part of four decades now. Words like ‘surgical strikes’ were common during the Global War on Terror.
This technology will allow the US to maintain its precision capabilities, which help reduce civilian deaths and lessen collateral property damage.
As for the Sandia scientists, I imagine it’s a dream come true to see your hard work in the lab translate into practical applications that will help both the civilian industry and defense communities.
Peter Schwindt, a quantum sensing scientist at Sandia, said “I have a passion around seeing these technologies move into real applications.”
Well, there you have it.
Слава Україні!
A really interesting piece. And potentially very good news.
One question I have, if deployed to Ukraine, what are the risks that equipment with the technology could be captured by Russia and reversed engineered? Is this something the regular Ukrainian soldier would carry?
Sounds fantastic! Great news.
Now the foreign espionage that undoubtedly will come after it must be stopped.