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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 30 March 2010, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office under its Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. It reviews quantum entanglement, nonlocality and EPR experiments, and asks whether nonlocal quantum effects could carry observer-to-observer signals faster than light. The paper describes proposed experiments and an example of real-time Earth control of a Mars rover. It concludes that there is no compelling answer yet and that experimental tests are needed.
From the source: Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 3/30/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD reviews quantum entanglement and nonlocality with a focus on whether those phenomena might be usable as a means of faster-than-light communication between observers, especially for real-time space operations over interplanetary distances. The report surveys the relevant quantum experiments and no-signal theorems, then examines proposed communication schemes based mainly on momentum-entangled photons, including scenarios involving superluminal and retro-causal signaling. However, it repeatedly acknowledges that the central question remains unresolved experimentally, and it gives substantial attention to the coherence-versus-entanglement tradeoff and other features of standard quantum mechanics that may prevent usable signaling even if non-local correlations are experimentally validated. Overall, the document is an exploratory analysis of whether quantum nonlocality could conceivably support a practical communications application rather than a demonstration of prospective utility.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /P91t 9ffl@IAL WSE &P•Llf implications of this dichotomy are considered in the context of the "no-signal" theorems . It is noted that there is some misinformation in the literature concerning the chronology of successful EPR polarization correlation experiments, and here we wish to set the record at least somewhat straighter. The experimental measurement that first demonstrated a polarization correlation related to EPR nonlocality was performed by C. S. Wu and I. Shanknov in 1949 (Reference 7), well before Bell's work and the subsequent interest in testing Bell's Inequality. Wu and Shanknov showed that the linear polarizations of back-to-back entangled gamma rays from electron-positron annihilation (an L=O negative parity state) were anticorrelated, for example, if one photon was polarized vertically, then the other was polarized horizontally. They did not, however, investigate the falloff of the correlation with polarimeter angle, which is the basis of Bell Inequality tests, nor did they depict their results as a consequence of quantum nonlocality. Almost two decades passed before the publication of John Bell's pivotal work (Reference 8) in 1964 and 1966. In 1972, Freedman and Clauser (Reference 1) performed the first definitive Bell inequality test by measuring the polarization correlation of entangled photons from a positive parity L=O atomic cascade in calcium. Their results were in agreement with the predictions of quantum mechanics and were inconsistent with local hidden-variable theories by 6. 7 standard deviations. A decade later, in 1982, EPR measurements of the Aspect group (Reference 2) eliminated several "loophole" scenarios that might constitute unlikely ways of preserving classical locality and again demonstrated agreement with quantum mechanics and inconsistency with local hidden variable theories, this time by 46 standard deviations. In a more recent example of an EPR experiment, the Gisin group (Reference 9) used the fiber-optic cables owned by the Swiss Telephone System to demonstrate the nonlocal connection between EPR measurements made at locations in Geneva and Bern, Swiss cities with a line -of-sight separation of 156 km-a direct demonstration, if one was required, that quantum nonlocality can operate over quite large distances. LENS ~ FILTER POLARIZER 2 ~LE , .....__ _ __-..i DISC. f8 P.H.A. ELAY COINC . COINC. TA.C. Ca-OVEN LENS RI ~'~ POLARIZER I =--------i Figure 1. Schematic of the 1972 Freedman-Clauser Experiment (Reference 1) UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOil OFFl@IAL W!H! 9HL1/ 2
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