Quantum’s Real Triumph Is the Atomic Clock

In October 2025 an optical clock was tested aboard a Royal Navy uncrewed submarine. The clock, Infleqtion’s Tiqker, could not tell the vessel where it was, and a submarine under water cannot receive GPS. What it could do was hold accurate time. That let the navigation system stay accurate for longer between trips to the surface, which is a modest job for a machine built on single atoms. Infleqtion called it the first such test on an underwater drone. That modest job is the story of quantum technology in miniature. The quantum computer, still waiting for the error correction that would make it useful, gets most of the attention. Quantum sensing, its plainer sibling, has been doing paid work for decades. Every GPS satellite carries atomic clocks, which the US aviation regulator says keep time to at least a billionth of a second, and every phone and car that finds its way by satellite depends on them. The quiet success is now being sold on fear. Satellite jamming has given quantum navigation a market…