Preface
As the world's most widely used satellite positioning system, GPS has been used by countries all over the world.
Recently, the United States announced that it has made a major breakthrough in the quantum field, and its missiles may no longer rely on GPS.
So, how did the United States get rid of its dependence on GPS for missiles?
GPS was once the world's leader
There is a saying that "GPS is the only global positioning system in the world", and indeed, before the 90s of the last century, only GPS in the world successfully completed the network positioning system.
At that time, GPS satellite positioning systems were used almost all over the world, including China.
During the 2003 Iraq War, the United States made full use of its GPS satellite positioning system.
Most of Iraq's missiles came from the United States, and even though they had a considerable stockpile of missiles at the time, they were almost "blind" due to the lack of navigational guidance.
In modern warfare, there are about two types of missile guidance.
The first is to use GPS satellite positioning and the sky positioning system to strike at fixed positions.
There is also the use of "terminal guidance", including infrared guidance and image guidance technologies.
This guidance method does not rely heavily on GPS, but few countries in the world today can produce this product on their own.
By the 70s of the last century, the US military had been working hard to develop a new generation of satellite positioning systems.
In 1994, after 20 years, the U.S. military successfully deployed a constellation of 24 GPS satellites with 98 percent coverage worldwide.
In recent years, with the rise of the mainland's Beidou satellite, coupled with the research and development of the EU's Galileo satellite, everyone's dependence on the United States GPS has become lower and lower.
Moreover, after many problems with GPS in the past two years, everyone's expectations for GPS are even smaller.
However, I didn't expect the United States to develop quantum navigation again, and it can get rid of the dependence on GPS navigation!
So, what exactly is this quantum navigation?
A major breakthrough in the field of quantum in the United States
When the Russian-Ukrainian conflict broke out, Ukraine used the GPS system to hit the Russian army many times.
After that, Russia gradually learned how to better jam the GPS system, and for a long time GPS has been used as a guide for a variety of weapons, but now it is easily handled by Russia.
If Russia really grasps the "GPS", then in a future war, the United States will definitely suffer a big loss.
If, in the future, on the battlefield, US missiles are misled by GPS satellites or directly fall on US military bases, then the US military will become "fish and meat" on the board.
In order to get rid of the dependence on GPS as soon as possible, the United States is also building quantum navigation systems and new technologies non-stop.
Only by quickly mastering these two points can we truly distance ourselves from the world.
Nowadays, the United States has successfully created a new quantum navigation tool, that is, the "3D cooled atomic beam interferometer", which can also be called "inertial navigation".
This interferometer is also capable of providing a continuous stream of 3D cooling atomic beams for navigation.
The new quantum navigation system has two major functions, the first is to keep the signal frequency in a stable state all the time.
Secondly, it is able to maintain high-precision navigation clarity and accuracy.
Therefore, there is an essential difference between quantum navigation and GPS navigation in terms of working principle.
As a navigation system, GPS is easy to use, but there are also some disadvantages, the most serious is that there will be errors in the calculation results.
In some high-precision technologies, if you want to achieve more accurate positioning, you also need to use more complex positioning instruments.
In fact, this wave of operations by the United States is also aimed at reducing the dependence of missiles on GPS, after all, they do not want to suffer losses in GPS.
So, what exactly is "quantum"?
What is "Quantum"?
Everything in the world is made up of atoms, and atoms are made up of nuclei and electrons.
But in fact, quantum is just a physical concept, but it is something that cannot be seen or touched.
Scientific studies have shown that in every atom and molecule, the energy of electrons is quantized.
After the advent of quantum mechanics, people called traditional Newtonian mechanics classical mechanics.
What is the difference between this quantum navigation and ordinary navigation? It's actually very simple, because navigation satellites are generally located in orbits 20,000 kilometers above the ground.
Because the distance is too far and the signal transmission is also unstable, any buildings and bunkers on the ground will cause immeasurable damage to the satellite signal.
That's why the United States wants to get rid of its dependence on GPS.
During World War II, Germany pioneered a new navigation system, and with the support of this inertial navigation, the power of German missiles was also greatly improved.
To put it simply, inertial missiles are divided into two aspects: measurement and calculation, and the measurement part mainly relies on a series of sensors such as accelerators and electronic compasses.
After detecting the data, after uploading, the missile will carry out a "trajectory movement" according to a certain calculation, and this navigation system is actually very practical, it is only necessary to improve the accuracy as much as possible.
In 2020, the U.S. military divided the world's countries into four tiers based on "inertial navigation" technology.
And in the ranking of the United States, China is only in the third level!
So why does the U.S. rank China in the third tier?
China is on the third floor!
Previously, the continent did not attach much importance to the development of quantum navigation, so the continent also lagged behind the United States and other countries in this aspect.
In 2020, the U.S. military released a report in which the U.S. classified countries around the world into four tiers based on the level of development of quantum navigation.
At the first level are the United States, Britain and France, three countries that have mastered quantum navigation technology, which is also the goal of many countries to catch up.
In the second tier are countries such as Russia, Japan, and Germany that have already mastered most of the technology.
In the third tier, there are countries such as China, Ukraine, and Canada, which can only be ranked third because they have only mastered part of the technology.
At the end of the list, that is, India, South Korea and other countries, basically do not get involved in quantum navigation, so they do not have research and development capabilities.
However, the mainland does not need to worry too much, because we have our own Beidou satellite.
Because the Beidou satellite is also the third mature satellite navigation system in the world, we can not only provide services to users in corners around the world, but also ensure a certain accuracy.
Only when we have our own satellite positioning system can we ensure that we are not constrained by other countries.
However, although the Beidou satellite is very powerful, we must also face up to the gap between ourselves and the United States.
Especially in the field of quantum navigation, we still need to seize the time to develop to avoid being completely unable to keep up with the development later!
Sources of information:
The United States made a breakthrough in quantum navigation, saying that China is in the third level, and the actual mainland has already used the Mozi ?——Observer Network