Infleqtion (NYSE: INFQ) has demonstrated quantum-based positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities using its commercial Tiqker optical atomic clock during the Maritime Big Play Pacific (MBP-P) military exercise. Sponsored by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering and conducted across the Southern California (SOCAL) operating area, the two-week trial involved participation from the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, and allied AUKUS partners (the United Kingdom and Australia). The hardware operated continuously aboard the U.S. Navy support vessel RV Merlin while concurrently supporting BARB-26, a specialized naval exercise evaluating emerging subsea and seabed warfare systems.
At-Sea Environmental Stability and Optical Architecture
Operating precise timing standards at sea requires overcoming platform motion, mechanical vibration, and ambient thermal fluctuations that typically degrade laboratory-grade optical cavity alignments. Tiqker utilizes optical atomic transitions in neutral atoms to generate an ultra-stable local frequency reference, delivering frequency stability orders of magnitude beyond conventional quartz or rubidium microwave standards. The continuous two-week operational deployment on RV Merlin validated thermal management and ruggedized photonics under marine vessel dynamics, providing holdover timing for onboard communications synchronization, radar arrays, and navigation systems operating in GPS-degraded, jammed, or spoofed environments.
| Infleqtion Tiqker Field Deployment Milestones | ||
|---|---|---|
| Operational Trial | Host Platform & Partners | Operational & Tactical Environment |
| Maritime Big Play Pacific & BARB-26 (2026) | RV Merlin (U.S. Navy / AUKUS) | Continuous two-week surface vessel deployment in SOCAL; subsea and seabed warfare PNT support. |
| Subsea Submersible Trials (2025) | XV Excalibur (UK Royal Navy) | Submerged operations during multiple dive profiles aboard an uncrewed submarine testbed. |
| Airborne Demonstrations (2024) | RJ100 Testbed (QinetiQ & BAE Systems) | Flight trials validating optical clock stability under high acceleration and dynamic altitude shifts. |
Naval Fleet Integration and PNT Denial Realities
The SOCAL exercise directly addresses the vulnerability of naval strike groups and autonomous surface/subsea vessels to satellite navigation disruption. For forward-deployed expeditionary forces, relying exclusively on GPS creates a single point of failure in contested electronic warfare environments. While the successful trial on RV Merlin demonstrates resilience across marine vibration spectra, broad naval fleet adoption faces systems-integration constraints. Deploying compact optical atomic clocks across surface ships, submarines, and autonomous uncrewed vehicles (UUVs) requires standardizing Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) envelopes, reducing long-term component drift, and establishing depot-level maintenance protocols that do not require specialist quantum optics technicians at sea.
Technical platform specifications are available on the Infleqtion Tiqker Portal here, with exercise details documented in the official Infleqtion Press Release here.
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