{"id":20988878,"date":"2026-09-07T21:43:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T19:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/diu-honeywell-magnav-gps-free-flight-test-2026\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T21:46:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T19:46:06","slug":"diu-honeywell-magnav-gps-free-flight-test-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/fr\/diu-honeywell-magnav-gps-free-flight-test-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"GPS Off for Four Hours: The Jet That Navigated by Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n<p>An Embraer 170 flew from Puget Sound to southern Alaska and back, four hours and twenty-three minutes, with GPS switched off the whole way. It navigated by reading the magnetic field of the rocks underneath it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>This is being reported in several places as the US Air Force testing quantum inertial sensors. It was not the Air Force, and it was not inertial. Both details matter, because the thing that actually flew is more interesting than the thing being described.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px 24px;margin:26px 0;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px\">Quick Facts &mdash; The 4 September 2026 test flight<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Who:<\/strong> Defense Innovation Unit with Honeywell Aerospace &mdash; not AFRL, not the USAF<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Aircraft:<\/strong> Embraer 170, a civil regional jet<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Route:<\/strong> Puget Sound, Seattle, to southern Alaska and back, over the Pacific<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Duration:<\/strong> 4 hours 23 minutes, GPS-denied throughout<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Technology:<\/strong> MagNav &mdash; magnetic anomaly navigation, not quantum inertial navigation<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Claimed result:<\/strong> 89% better position accuracy than traditional backup navigation methods<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Programme:<\/strong> Transition of Quantum Sensing, launched spring 2024; 72 companies responded<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Next:<\/strong> A demonstration on a USAF C-17 Globemaster III later in 2026<\/p><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Two Different Things That Keep Getting Confused<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>There are two ways to navigate without satellites using quantum sensors, and they are not the same.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Quantum inertial navigation<\/strong> uses atom interferometry. Lasers cool atoms to near absolute zero and split their matter-wave along two paths; acceleration and rotation shift the resulting interference pattern. Because the measurement is referenced to atomic mass and laser wavelength &mdash; physical constants &mdash; there is no mechanical bias or scale factor to age. A conventional ring-laser-gyro inertial system drifts because those parameters wander with temperature, vibration and time, and dead reckoning integrates that error twice, so position error grows roughly with the square of elapsed time. A quantum inertial unit does not abolish drift. It shrinks the bias being integrated.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Magnetic anomaly navigation<\/strong> is something else entirely. Iron-bearing crustal rock produces a fixed, unique pattern of tiny variations in the Earth&rsquo;s magnetic field. A quantum magnetometer measures the local field strength to picotesla precision, and software matches that live trace against a pre-existing magnetic map. The output is an absolute position fix, like GPS, except it reads the ground instead of satellites.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The crucial difference is that MagNav error is bounded. It does not grow with distance, because it is map-matching rather than dead reckoning. That is exactly why it works over open ocean, where terrain-referenced and visual navigation have nothing to work with &mdash; and it is why the route ran up the Pacific rather than over land.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>In practice the two are complementary: the magnetometer bounds the inertial drift. Honeywell runs both as separate programmes &mdash; CRUISE for the quantum inertial unit, QUEST for MagNav.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/embraer-170-illustrative-regional-jet.jpg\" alt=\"An Embraer 170 regional jet on final approach\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">An Embraer 170 &mdash; the same type used for the test, though not the test aircraft. No tail number was released. Photo: 4300streetcar, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;This is a significant win for the department&rsquo;s quantum sensing priorities, showcasing that MagNav capabilities are no longer a distant research goal.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Kyle Norman<\/strong> &mdash; Deputy Director, Kill Web portfolio, Defense Innovation Unit, 4 September 2026<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">About That 89 Per Cent<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The headline figure deserves reading carefully. The 89 per cent improvement is measured against what DIU calls traditional backup navigation methods &mdash; radar mapping and visual cues such as rivers, highways and cities.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>That is not a comparison against GPS. It is not a comparison against a strategic-grade inertial system either. It is a comparison against the weakest available fallback. No absolute accuracy in metres has been published, no drift rate, and no detail on which magnetic map was used.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>For contrast, Q-CTRL published far more rigorous numbers in April 2025: positioning uncertainty around 0.03 per cent of distance travelled, best trials near 0.01 per cent, up to fifty times lower uncertainty than a strategic-grade inertial system over a 500-kilometre flight, and 99.97 per cent uptime &mdash; using magnetic maps taken from public-domain databases rather than a bespoke survey. That work went to a preprint others can check.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;We achieved an accuracy in some trials comparable to a sharpshooter hitting a bullseye from 1,000 yards away.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Michael J. Biercuk<\/strong> &mdash; CEO and founder, Q-CTRL, 14 April 2025<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">This Is Not the First<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The honest framing is an incremental programme milestone, not a breakthrough.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>In May 2024, Infleqtion flew the first publicly acknowledged quantum navigation trials anywhere, with BAE Systems and QinetiQ, from MoD Boscombe Down in Wiltshire, aboard QinetiQ&rsquo;s RJ100 testbed. Britain&rsquo;s science minister flew on the final sortie on 9 May.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Boeing went further. In flights announced in March 2025, a six-axis quantum inertial measurement unit built with AOSense was integrated into a full inertial navigation system and flown on a Beechcraft 1900D out of St. Louis &mdash; four hours without GPS, eighteen months ago. The same flights carried a SandboxAQ magnetometer and a daytime star tracker. Boeing put the benefit at reducing end-of-flight navigation error from tens of kilometres to as little as tens of metres.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>And in August 2026, Q-CTRL demonstrated GPS-free quantum <em>gravimetric<\/em> navigation at sea aboard an Australian Navy vessel, running 144 hours continuously without human intervention on 180 watts in a single server rack.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>So Boeing had already flown four GPS-free hours with quantum sensors. What DIU and Honeywell added is a longer flight, over featureless ocean, with the output streamed live to pilots on ordinary tablets &mdash; the point being that no cockpit retrofit is required.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/e7tBhu8u0C8\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p>Q-CTRL&rsquo;s explanation of magnetic navigation, which is the clearest published account of how map-matching actually works.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Why Anyone Is Bothering<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Because satellite navigation is under sustained attack, and the numbers are not subtle.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>IATA&rsquo;s 2025 safety report recorded GPS jamming up 67 per cent and spoofing up 193 per cent against 2023, concentrated in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Baltic and the Black Sea. The Swedish Transport Agency logged 733 jamming incidents over the Baltic between January and August 2025, against 55 in the whole of 2023. Vilnius recorded more than 800 interference reports in the last quarter of 2024, against 124 a year earlier.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It has already changed schedules. Finnair suspended flights to Tartu in 2024 after two aircraft could not complete approaches. A Ryanair service to Vilnius diverted to Warsaw in January 2025. EASA issued the fourth revision of its safety bulletin on satellite navigation outages on 3 July 2026, warning that incidents are becoming both more severe and more sophisticated.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/gps-block-iii-satellite-artist-impression.jpg\" alt=\"Artist&rsquo;s impression of a GPS Block III satellite in orbit\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A GPS III satellite, artist&rsquo;s impression. The constellation is not the problem &mdash; the signal reaching the aircraft is. Image: U.S. Air Force<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;With the growing threat of jamming and spoofing, aircraft and naval vessels on critical missions can no longer rely solely on GPS.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Matt Picchetti<\/strong> &mdash; Vice President and General Manager, Navigation and Sensors, Honeywell Aerospace Technologies, 17 July 2025<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What to Watch<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The next step is a C-17 Globemaster III later this year, which is where it stops being a civil testbed and starts being an airlift capability.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Two things are worth keeping in proportion. The published performance figures are still weak by the standards of what competitors have already documented, and the programme moved from problem statement to flying prototype in about two years &mdash; which is genuinely fast for defence procurement and is arguably the real achievement here.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>One myth to retire while we are at it: there is no credible published evidence of a Chinese quantum navigation flight trial. China has flight-tested a drone-mounted atomic magnetometer, but that was magnetic anomaly <em>detection<\/em> for hunting submarines, which is a different job.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>Did the US Air Force test quantum navigation sensors?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Not in this case. The 4 September 2026 flight was run by the Defense Innovation Unit with Honeywell Aerospace, aboard a civil Embraer 170. Several reports have attributed it to the Air Force Research Laboratory, which is not named in the primary release. A demonstration on a USAF C-17 Globemaster III is planned for later in 2026.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What is magnetic anomaly navigation?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">MagNav uses a quantum magnetometer to measure the strength of the Earth&rsquo;s magnetic field to picotesla precision, then matches that live reading against a pre-existing magnetic map of the crustal rock below. Because iron-bearing rock creates a fixed and unique pattern, the result is an absolute position fix &mdash; like GPS, but reading the ground instead of satellites. Its error is bounded and does not grow with distance.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How is that different from quantum inertial navigation?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Quantum inertial navigation uses atom interferometry to measure acceleration and rotation against physical constants, dramatically reducing the bias that makes conventional inertial systems drift. But it is still dead reckoning, so error still accumulates over time. Magnetic navigation is map-matching and produces a bounded position fix. In practice the two are complementary, and Honeywell runs them as separate programmes.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How good is the accuracy?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The Defense Innovation Unit claims an 89 per cent improvement in position accuracy over traditional backup navigation methods, which it defines as radar mapping and visual cues such as rivers and highways. That is not a comparison against GPS or against a strategic-grade inertial system, and no absolute accuracy in metres has been published. Q-CTRL published more rigorous figures in April 2025, including positioning uncertainty of around 0.03 per cent of distance travelled.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Has anyone flown GPS-free with quantum sensors before?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Yes. Infleqtion, BAE Systems and QinetiQ flew the first publicly acknowledged quantum navigation trials from MoD Boscombe Down in May 2024. Boeing announced flights in March 2025 in which a six-axis quantum inertial measurement unit built with AOSense navigated a Beechcraft 1900D for four hours without GPS. In August 2026 Q-CTRL demonstrated quantum gravimetric navigation at sea aboard an Australian Navy vessel for over 144 continuous hours.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why does GPS-denied navigation matter now?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Satellite navigation interference has risen sharply. IATA recorded GPS jamming up 67 per cent and spoofing up 193 per cent in 2025 against 2023. Sweden logged 733 jamming incidents over the Baltic between January and August 2025, against 55 in all of 2023. Finnair suspended flights to Tartu in 2024 after aircraft could not complete approaches, and EASA issued a further revision of its satellite navigation outage bulletin in July 2026.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Did the US Air Force test quantum navigation sensors?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Not in this case. The 4 September 2026 flight was run by the Defense Innovation Unit with Honeywell Aerospace, aboard a civil Embraer 170. Several reports have attributed it to the Air Force Research Laboratory, which is not named in the primary release. A demonstration on a USAF C-17 Globemaster III is planned for later in 2026.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What is magnetic anomaly navigation?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"MagNav uses a quantum magnetometer to measure the strength of the Earth\u2019s magnetic field to picotesla precision, then matches that live reading against a pre-existing magnetic map of the crustal rock below. Because iron-bearing rock creates a fixed and unique pattern, the result is an absolute position fix \u2014 like GPS, but reading the ground instead of satellites. Its error is bounded and does not grow with distance.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How is that different from quantum inertial navigation?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Quantum inertial navigation uses atom interferometry to measure acceleration and rotation against physical constants, dramatically reducing the bias that makes conventional inertial systems drift. But it is still dead reckoning, so error still accumulates over time. Magnetic navigation is map-matching and produces a bounded position fix. In practice the two are complementary, and Honeywell runs them as separate programmes.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How good is the accuracy?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The Defense Innovation Unit claims an 89 per cent improvement in position accuracy over traditional backup navigation methods, which it defines as radar mapping and visual cues such as rivers and highways. That is not a comparison against GPS or against a strategic-grade inertial system, and no absolute accuracy in metres has been published. Q-CTRL published more rigorous figures in April 2025, including positioning uncertainty of around 0.03 per cent of distance travelled.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Has anyone flown GPS-free with quantum sensors before?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Yes. Infleqtion, BAE Systems and QinetiQ flew the first publicly acknowledged quantum navigation trials from MoD Boscombe Down in May 2024. Boeing announced flights in March 2025 in which a six-axis quantum inertial measurement unit built with AOSense navigated a Beechcraft 1900D for four hours without GPS. In August 2026 Q-CTRL demonstrated quantum gravimetric navigation at sea aboard an Australian Navy vessel for over 144 continuous hours.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why does GPS-denied navigation matter now?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Satellite navigation interference has risen sharply. IATA recorded GPS jamming up 67 per cent and spoofing up 193 per cent in 2025 against 2023. Sweden logged 733 jamming incidents over the Baltic between January and August 2025, against 55 in all of 2023. Finnair suspended flights to Tartu in 2024 after aircraft could not complete approaches, and EASA issued a further revision of its satellite navigation outage bulletin in July 2026.\"}}]}<\/script><p><em>Sources: Defense Innovation Unit, 4 September 2026; Honeywell Aerospace; FlightGlobal; Airforce Technology; Boeing; Q-CTRL and its April 2025 preprint; QinetiQ and Infleqtion; IATA 2025 Annual Safety Report; Swedish Transport Agency; EASA.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/nasa-t-38-talon-replacement-search-2026\/\">NASA Goes Shopping for a New Jet<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/ge-aerospace-derecho-mach-5-hypersonic-testbed-diu-hycat-2026\/\">GE Aerospace Wins DIU Contract for Mach 5 Derecho Testbed<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/jp-aerospace-hazel-supertandem-airship-hypersonic-2026\/\">JP Aerospace Teases a Hypersonic Dropped From an Airship<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Embraer 170 flew from Puget Sound to southern Alaska and back, four hours and twenty-three minutes, with GPS switched off the whole way. It navigated by reading the magnetic field of the rocks underneath it. This is being reported in several places as the US Air Force testing quantum inertial sensors. It was not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":20988254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[664,670],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20988878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military-aviation","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>GPS Off for Four Hours: The Jet That Navigated by Rock | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A magnetic navigation test flight ran 4h23 from Seattle to Alaska reading the rock below. 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