Q-CTRL's Quantum Navigating Dragon
Dragon not required, but highly desired.
The Royal Australian Navy's multi-role aviation training vessel (MATV), Merchant Vessel (MV) Sycamore successfully field-tested an on-board quantum navigation sensor from Q-CTRL. The trials demonstrated that the sensing system, named Ironstone Opal, could leverage variations in Earth’s gravity to provide reliable position information for ship navigation in GPS-jammed and GPS-spoofed environments.
By the way, that’s the actual ship in the scene above. The Quantum Dragon kept his wings outstretched so as to not throw off the vessel’s trim as he was trying to “help.”
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
In case you’ve missed it, GPS denial has become a genuine concern. The eastern European and Mediterranean theaters have been reporting incidents for years, and recent events in the Middle East have caused a dramatic uptick in the Arabian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Taiwan has recently had incidents as well. We’ve also seen spoofing in the Middle East and between India and Pakistan. All of these incidents are dangerous, threatening maritime safety, thus negatively influencing commercial shipping and logistics, thus negatively impacting global economic stability.
This is not necessarily an exhaustive list, by the way. I’m just providing some examples.
And for the record, no one denies or spoofs a dragon. Just sayin’.
It’s already productized.
It’s worth noting that the Ironstone Opal neither looks like a laboratory setup nor needs a technician to operate it. Instead, it operates independently, like an actual product, with the end-user operating it remotely. If you’re wondering why it’s purple, that’s because its namesake gemstone is purple.
The gemstone is getting harder to find, quite frankly, because The Quantum Dragon started hoarding it as soon as he found about it.
Conclusion
I was one of the earliest users of Q-CTRL’s Fire Opal, and I’ve evaluated all of Q-CTRL’s Black Opal tutorials. Although I have obviously not had a chance to use Ironstone Opal, the company’s track record with previous product releases is that of waiting until something actually works before unveiling it. I know this because I’m impatient. Q-CTRL has exceeded my expectations more than it has met them, and that would be my expectation of Ironstone Opal.
Image generated by an AI model provided by Microsoft Copilot.