GPS-denied autonomy

Every Post Quantum Labs aircraft assumes denied communications and denied satellite navigation in every operation. This is the view from ARES, a reconnaissance and targeting swarm of small quadcopters.

Post Quantum Labs builds autonomy, sensing, and secure links for uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS). Every design starts from the same assumption: the Global Positioning System (GPS) is denied, and communications are denied, degraded, intermittent, and limited (DDIL).

Communications
DDIL in every operationEach aircraft carries its full decision stack on board and continues the mission with no operator link and no satellite link.
Navigation
GPS denied in every operationAircraft navigate by vision, inertial sensing, and ranging to each other. Testing runs with satellite navigation hardware disconnected.
Security
Every link treated as contestedLinks use only Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0 (CNSA 2.0) post-quantum algorithms and recover after a compromise.

ARES

Tasked from a tablet by a Tactical Air Control Party operator in the field

  1. A Department of the Air Force Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) operator sees twelve ARES aircraft on a Team Awareness Kit (TAK) tablet.
  2. The operator presses a contact on the map and chooses to track it.
  3. Aircraft move to take the track, and the rest keep covering the area.

Advanced Reconfigurable and Evolving Swarm

ARES is a decentralized intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (ISR-T) swarm of small quadcopters for forward air control teams, launched in place of fixed-wing reconnaissance aircraft. Every aircraft plans locally and switches among sensing, backup, and relay roles in seconds to hold coverage of a target.

The full stack runs in under 10 watts on a Qualcomm system on a chip. Operators assign targets from an Android application built for the Team Awareness Kit (TAK).

Operating assumption
DDIL communications and denied GPS in every operation
Award
Phase I and Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR)
Research partner
Metropolitan State University
Sensors
Fused color and thermal video with vision-based navigation
Partner fit
Group 1 and Group 2 airframe makers, sensor suppliers, and TAK integrators

SPARTAN

A learned policy that is rewarded for holding track

  1. A learned policy scores its options and sends air-launched effects to hold track on Red ships. Each simulated episode starts from a different layout.
  2. A link drops or an effect is lost, so the mesh reroutes and a replacement launches. A rule-based fallback steers effects around defended zones.
  3. A captured effect is revoked by its peers and loses the mesh.

Secure Path-Routing with Autonomous Resilience for Targeting and Adaptive Navigation

SPARTAN keeps large formations on mission with communications and GPS denied. Each aircraft carries a reinforcement learning policy trained in the Advanced Framework for Simulation, Integration and Modeling (AFSIM), with rule-based behaviors that replace any unsafe action.

Shared decisions require agreement from a quorum of peer aircraft. Traffic reroutes around jammed or lost aircraft, and a captured aircraft loses mesh access as soon as its peers revoke it.

Operating assumption
DDIL communications and denied GPS in every operation
Award
Direct to Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)
Sponsor
Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Sensors Directorate
Framework
Onboard Tactical Airborne Sensor Orchestration (OTASO)
Partner fit
Airframe, autopilot, and onboard computing makers for hardware-in-the-loop and flight testing

MeshStrike

Many small aircraft acting as one large antenna

  1. Aircraft launch and form a line array.
  2. The elements align their phases, a beam forms broadside, and a phase ramp steers it onto the target emitter.
  3. Two elements drop out and the array re-forms the beam with the six that remain.

Distributed coherent aperture

MeshStrike synchronizes a mesh of small multirotor aircraft so their radios combine into a single focused beam on a selected target. The aircraft hold the tight timing and position alignment that a combined beam requires, with GPS denied.

Combined power and gain grow as aircraft join the formation. When aircraft drop out, the mesh re-forms the beam with the aircraft that remain.

Operating assumption
DDIL communications and denied GPS in every operation
Aperture
Distributed, coherent, multi-aircraft radio frequency aperture
Aircraft
Small multirotor UAS
Link security
HAVOC with KEVLAR
Partner fit
Software-defined radio, precision timing, and small multirotor suppliers

HAVOC with KEVLAR

The post-quantum link under every program

The animation illustrates designed behavior. It is a picture of the concept and carries no test results.

  1. Every link between two aircraft holds its own key, and new links set up a fresh one.
  2. Keys step forward throughout the flight, and old keys are discarded.
  3. An adversary compromises a link, and its two aircraft exchange a new post-quantum key.
  4. Jamming breaks links, and they rekey as they return.
  5. A captured aircraft is revoked by its peers and loses the mesh.

HAVOC is a post-quantum command and control link for Group 1 through Group 4 UAS and a drop-in replacement for the MAVLink 2 protocol. It brings CNSA 2.0 protection to command and control traffic with no change in link performance for the operator.

KEVLAR is the rekeying protocol inside it. KEVLAR is designed to recover a link through jamming and lost packets, and to let aircraft rekey while holding radio silence under emission control (EMCON). This behavior is tested in simulation today, with bench and flight testing to follow.

Illustration. Random values stand in for link keys, which are replaced throughout the flight.

Post-quantum signatures are far larger than a MAVLink frame

Published standard sizes. Each block is one MAVLink 2 frame of 280 bytes, the largest the protocol carries.

MAVLink 2 signature block13 bytes
Largest MAVLink 2 frame280 bytes
ML-KEM-1024 ciphertext1,568 bytes
ML-DSA-87 signature4,627 bytes

One ML-DSA-87 signature equals 16.5 MAVLink 2 frames.

VORTEX

Passive location of hostile emitters

  1. Three aircraft take bearings on a hostile emitter.
  2. The aircraft spread to wide crossing angles and the fix tightens.
  3. A decoy appears, is screened, and is rejected.

VORTEX is passive radio frequency (RF) sensing for Group 2 aircraft. It listens for hostile emitters such as jammers, locates them, and guides attritable aircraft toward them. Aircraft share bearings over the KEVLAR mesh and use the emitter as a navigation aid, since GPS is assumed denied.

Self-funded simulation demonstrator.

Movement Zulu

Mission planning inside the commander's intent

  1. Packs hold their assigned sectors.
  2. Packs move to new sectors as the plan changes.
  3. A tasking that crosses the commander's authority limit is stopped before it executes.

Movement Zulu plans and assigns tasks across hundreds of uncrewed aircraft organized in mission packs. A hard safety shield enforces the commander's authority limits before any action executes, and pack allocation continues when links to headquarters break.

Research and development in simulation.

Monthly flight test campaign

Every sortie flown with satellite navigation disconnected

  1. Complete

    Policy validation in simulation

    Policies are trained and gated across randomized sorties with wind, sensor noise, and aircraft dropout. Across all programs, the on-premises NVIDIA Blackwell cluster has run millions of simulated sorties and billions of simulated time steps.

  2. Active

    Hardware-in-the-loop bench

    Flight computers for three to four aircraft run onboard visual-inertial odometry (VIO), quorum coordination, and HAVOC with KEVLAR with GPS hardware disconnected.

  3. Upcoming

    Range flight with zero satellite navigation

    Three to four quadcopters fly with GPS disabled from launch through recovery, navigating by VIO and peer-to-peer ranging over the KEVLAR mesh.

Post Quantum Labs LLC is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), certified by the Small Business Administration and founded in January 2024.

The company builds swarm autonomy, passive radio frequency sensing, coherent apertures, and CNSA 2.0 secure links for uncrewed aircraft systems. Every program stands alone or interlocks on one secure stack.

CAGE code
9T5C5 (Commercial and Government Entity)
Headquarters
Englewood, New Jersey
Operations
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Cryptography
Exclusive license for uncrewed aircraft use of post-quantum cryptographic modules developed by Secrecy Labs, backed by 130,000 engineering hours. The modules are pending final review under Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3.

What we bring

  • Autonomy, passive sensing, and CNSA 2.0 security software ready for partner platforms.
  • SDVOSB status that counts toward a prime contractor's small business subcontracting goals.
  • SBIR and STTR data rights with Phase III sole-source eligibility.

Who we look for

  • Makers of Group 1 through Group 4 airframes, payloads, autopilots, tactical radios, and software-defined radios.
  • Research universities for STTR topics.
  • Defense primes and command and control integrators that carry Phase III capabilities into programs of record.

How we engage

  • Lead software-centric SBIR, STTR, and Other Transaction Authority (OTA) topics with hardware and university subcontractors.
  • Join partner-led teams as the autonomy, aperture, or post-quantum link subcontractor.
  • Each party keeps its background intellectual property, with workshare and data rights set up front.
  1. Mutual nondisclosure agreement so engineering teams can exchange technical detail
  2. Technical exchange aligned to a topic, test bed, or program of record
  3. Teaming agreement that sets roles, workshare, and data rights

Request a briefing

Post Quantum Labs gives technical and operational briefings to program offices, research laboratories, allied defense ministries, and prime integrators. Tell us which program you want to see and the mission you have in mind.

info@postquantumlabs.com Email Post Quantum Labs