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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 10 December 2010, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program. It examines quantum computing and DNA-based molecular computing as options for onboard supercomputing in future spaceflight. It forecasts working ion trap quantum computers within 10 years, simple DNA tile computing within 20 years, and self-repairing DNA computers and hybrid quantum dot systems on a 40-year horizon.
From the source: Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 12/10/10, 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 surveys advanced computing concepts for future space and automation applications, focusing on quantum and molecular (DNA-based) computing as potential alternatives to conventional silicon electronics. The report introduces quantum computing principles alongside DNA-based logic gates, self-assembly, and nanoscale repair mechanisms, arguing that these unconventional architectures might eventually offer advantages in radiation tolerance, physical robustness, and specialized onboard processing for space-based platforms. It notes that near-term practical barriers remain substantial. Quantum systems continue to depend on complex cryogenics, shielding, and unsolved reliability challenges, while DNA-based computing remains a far-future concept rather than a viable alternative to general-purpose processors. Overall, the document presents both frameworks as long-term possibilities to complement, rather than immediately replace proven space-qualified electronics. It concludes that the stronger, nearer-term cases for such architectures are in highly specialized or hybrid roles rather than in fully mature general-purpose onboard computing applications.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOA 8FFl&I.t.k WSli 8,.k\f Quantum Dots in Graphene Nanoribbons Graphene ribbons are one dimensional stripes of graphene. They can be considered as unfolded carbon nanotubes. Graphene ribbons were proposed by Nakada et al in 1996 (52). Nakada used the same single orbital tight-binding model that successfully portrays two dimensional graphene as a semimetal; graphene ribbons are either metallic or semiconducting depending on their crystallographic orientation and width. More realistic calculations using the Hubbard model in a mean field approximation and density functional calculations show that zigzag ribbons are insulating due to the magnetization of their edges with opposite spin orientation in each edge. It has been found that this anti-ferromagnetic insulator phase has a hidden underlying ferroelectric order that can be described as excitonic insulator whose order parameter is the spin-resolved dipole operator, the analog of the spin current operator (53). Long (gl μm) graphene nanoconstrictions display gapped behavior: conduction is suppressed by several orders of magnitude for a wide range of gate voltages around the Dirac point, and for tens of millivolts of source-drain bias (54) (55). Figure 2. Quantum dot in graphene nanoribbon. A ribbon of graphene with semi-conducting armchair boundaries is schematically shown. Two barrier gates (blue) define the rectangular size of the quantum dot (with width W and length L). A back gate (red) allows one to shift the energy levels in the dot. Two or more quantum dots of this type can be easily put in series in a single nanoribbon. UNCLASSIFIED// FOR OPPICIJ!tt U:!I!! 8HL\S 15
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 54 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.