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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 OFFIEIAk W&lii 0NLY loss within waveguides, and is equivalent to decoherence time in other quantum hardware. n The size of quantum gates is currently on the order of cm; this hurdle becomes less as gate size decreases. It is finally concluded that photons will likely be used in a hybrid technology with another quantum element serving as the basis for gates and other interactions. This scheme is known as distributed quantum computing, where elements can be separated by significant distance. This distance is either large by comparison with gate or gate array size, or actually large (km) in a communications network. Photonic technologies are a very active development area: the raw number of publications found for "photon computers" or "photon computing" shows more entries for 2009 than for 2008 and 2007 combined.° Furthermore, many devices operate at or near room temperature and most do not require expensive cryogenic systems (temperature below He boiling point), making them inexpensive to research versus other technologies. These objective measures make breakthroughs more likely, and in 10 years all-optical computing should be addressing problems that cannot be accomplished via classical systems. In 40 years, manufacturing engineering will decrease the cost of these devices and they will be an option for many computing tasks in the space environment. Ion and Atomic Trap Technologies Individual atomic ions can be trapped in free space by nanoscale electrodes, while atoms can be trapped in an optical lattice created by lasers. In the ion systems, manipulation of electrode voltages move ions around the lattice and interact them with each other. In atomic systems, modulation of the optical lattice and/or external optical interference is used to manipulate the atoms. Ladd concludes that scaling is the primary hurdle in trap-based technologies. More detail of such hurdles in trap technologies is revealed in a year earlier (much longer) review by Haffner. (81) Ion-trap-based gate operations are shown to have arbitrarily high fidelity, or higher fidelity than required for fault-tolerant computation. The current bottleneck in trap technology versus classical systems is the trapping frequency of a few hundred microseconds, even though massive parallel operations are possible. Haffner concludes that there are no fundamental barriers to scaling trap-based computing, but the technology is challeng ing and will progress as evolution rather than revolution. This is encouraging given that 40 years ago 20-nm transistors seemed challenging, but without fundamental operational barriers. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Technologies NMR storage and manipulation has been shown in liquid media up to a dozen qubits. Liquids are preferred because of their longer T2. However, thermal motion in the liquid state made scalability an issue. Moving to solid state NMR to address thermodynamic issues dramatically decreases T2. Ladd concludes that NMR technologies are a good testing ground for fault tolerant algorithm development, but of little practical use for quantum computing. Superconducting Technologies Superconductivity is the flow of electricity without resistive losses. Similar to the laser, this macroscopic phenomenon has quantum mechanical origins. When cooled below a critical n A waveguide is the equivalent "wire" that isolates the transmission of photons between interaction and storage devices . 0 Web of Science database, Inquired 30 June 2010 . 22 UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFIClftt tJ.!I!!! 8HLY
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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.