Policy paper

National Quantum Strategy Missions

Updated 14 December 2023

In March 2023, the government published the National Quantum Strategy, where it committed to publishing long-term quantum missions to galvanise technology development towards ambitious outcomes.

With the biggest impacts for quantum technologies expected in the long-term, time-bound missions can crystallize where we want to get to as a country, focusing the activity and investment needed in the public and private sectors.

Since the publication of the strategy, the government has worked with industry, quantum experts, and investors to develop missions that will bring significant benefits to the economy and society such as:

• increased compute power that can deliver the next generation of drugs, chemicals, and materials;
• new navigation and timing systems to provide resilience and improved accuracy in the event of the denial of satellite systems;
• more precise sensors that deliver new capabilities to help monitor and maintain critical infrastructure, including seeing underground; and
• improved outcomes for patients across areas such as dementia, epilepsy, and cancer through earlier diagnosis and ultra-precise surgery.

Mission-led innovation

Pillar 4 of the UK Innovation Strategy recognises the role government can play in driving growth and supporting priority areas of the innovation system through a missions approach. Mission-oriented innovation – which comes in various forms – sets out to harness innovation through tackling major challenges faced by the UK and the world, catalysing growth and capability in priority technologies. The UK is a pioneer of such approaches, dating back to the Longitude Act of 1714, which inspired and incentivised innovators to invent a practical and reliable method for determining longitude to aid navigation at sea. More recently, rapidly developing, procuring, and manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines demonstrated a mission approach at its best, bringing together multiple organisations with a goal to protect UK citizens.

The quantum missions start with the technology and focus on achieving specific, ambitious outcomes that will have wide-ranging spillover benefits. For example, pulling through quantum sensing capabilities for infrastructure monitoring will have future impacts in developing advanced autonomous systems and drone technologies. They cover areas which are best suited to a mission focus on a particular outcome or outcomes that galvanise investment and collaboration. This means the missions vary in size and scope to best suit the needs of their area, rather than trying to achieve all outcomes the UK wants to reach on quantum technologies. To deliver the National Quantum Strategy, other approaches to stimulate innovation are also being deployed, across themes such as skills, acceleration programmes, and pro-innovation regulation.

Next steps

In the coming weeks, the government will work with industry, academia, and investors to define the programmes that will help to deliver each mission. These programmes will set out the core activities and milestones that are necessary to unlock investment, advance the science, and develop and demonstrate these technologies in the real world. The ultimate goal is to advance the UK’s thriving – though currently nascent – quantum industry, laying the foundations for future benefits to be continuously unlocked in the decades to come. The programmes will also set out how we will work with international partners to deliver the missions.

If you would like to be part of this process and are not currently in contact with the Office for Quantum at the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology, please signal your interest by emailing ofqenquiries@dsit.gov.uk.

The Missions

Mission 1

By 2035, there will be accessible, UK-based quantum computers capable of running 1 trillion operations and supporting applications that provide benefits well in excess of classical supercomputers across key sectors of the economy.

Mission 2

By 2035, the UK will have deployed the world’s most advanced quantum network at scale, pioneering the future quantum internet.

Mission 3

By 2030, every NHS Trust will benefit from quantum sensing-enabled solutions, helping those with chronic illness live healthier, longer lives through early diagnosis and treatment.

Mission 4

By 2030, quantum navigation systems, including clocks, will be deployed on aircraft, providing next-generation accuracy for resilience that is independent of satellite signals.

Mission 5

By 2030, mobile, networked quantum sensors will have unlocked new situational awareness capabilities, exploited across critical infrastructure in the transport, telecoms, energy, and defence sectors.

Summary of the Missions

Mission 1: by 2035, there will be accessible, UK-based quantum computers capable of running 1 trillion operations^{[footnote 1]} and supporting applications that provide benefits well in excess of classical supercomputers across key sectors of the economy.

We will do this through three mutually reinforcing core outcomes:

• To have competitive UK-based commercial capabilities across hardware, control architecture, and the supply chain that can enable performance in excess of 1 trillion coherent quantum operations;
• To combine this operational capacity with algorithm development and software capabilities to complete multiple useful calculations of significant value to the economy and society on a quantum computer – ones that are not practically possible on the world’s most powerful supercomputers. High impact will be achieved in the following sectors at a minimum: healthcare, finance, transport, defence, energy, and manufacturing; and
• To seamlessly integrate quantum computing into high performance computational workflows, enabling user access and widespread adoption, accompanied by user readiness support across the UK economy.

The mission will set out a scaled approach to achieving the mission, with industrial milestones including: 

• By 2028, extending beyond the NISQ-era with a million quantum operations, which will enable the exploration of applications associated with the simulation of chemical processes, helping to improve catalyst design for example.
• By 2032, demonstrating large-scale error correction capabilities with a billion quantum operations, with applications including accelerated drug discovery.
• By 2035, achieving quantum advantage at scale through reaching a trillion quantum operations, enabling applications such as optimising the production of clean hydrogen.

Mission 2: by 2035, the UK will have deployed the world’s most advanced quantum network at scale, pioneering the future quantum internet.

To deliver on the broad opportunities that are presented by quantum technologies, they will need to become firmly integrated within our digital infrastructure, including priority Future Telecoms platforms such as satellite communications. This will transform the way we secure, transmit and compute our data. The mission will focus on achieving the following outcomes:

• Scale computing: A quantum network in 2035 will see clusters of quantum processors networked together within and between data centres to scale computing power, turbocharging our ability to unlock high impact applications. This outcome will be integrated with Mission 1.
• Nationwide connectivity: We will be able to connect researchers and users in major cities and locations across the whole of the UK, enabling them to share information in a quantum state to facilitate secure, trustworthy, and remote access to capabilities and data.
• Early commercialisation: This mission will support further testing, demonstration, and evaluation of near-term commercial opportunities in quantum communications and component technologies. This will build the supply chain and operational learnings, providing the stepping-stone needed for future networks.
• International: The opportunities are global and the UK will work with at least five other countries to collaborate on developing underpinning technologies and connectivity with international quantum networks, including through satellite links.  The UK will also take a leadership role in developing quantum networking standards.
• Future Quantum Internet: At the end of the mission, the UK will have the capability to send quantum information from the local to the global scale and to exploit this for the benefit of our economy and society. This will be year 0 for what will become known as the quantum internet.

Mission 3: by 2030, every NHS Trust will benefit from quantum sensing-enabled solutions, helping those with chronic illness live healthier, longer lives through early diagnosis and treatment.

To deliver on the broad opportunities presented by quantum technologies to reduce costs and save lives, quantum-enabled products and services will need to become integrated within our NHS. This mission will build on early UK successes in the development of products to revolutionise healthcare capabilities and pull these through to adoption, providing a firm foundation to grow the UK quantum medical device industry sector.

The mission will also generate a pipeline of next-generation technologies which harness quantum physics to deliver early-stage diagnoses and improved surgical outcomes, across areas such as dementia, epilepsy, cancer, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases, as well as quantum for life sciences.

Outcomes of this mission include: 

• Brain Scanning: By 2028, quantum-enabled brain scanners will enable precision-guided surgery for children suffering severe neurological disease to improve recovery and outcomes. By 2030, adoption of these scanners in dementia will have enabled new research at scale – driving inward investment by global pharmaceutical companies developing dementia drugs.
• Cancer detection: By 2030, new quantum imaging technologies for breast cancer detection will be in use across hospitals in the UK, significantly reducing the need for unnecessary chemotherapy. Hospital trials across a wide range of cancer types will also be well advanced.
• Technology Pipeline: By the end of the mission, a transformative pipeline of healthcare and life sciences technologies will have emerged. This will include: ultra-sensitive rapid tests for infectious diseases; ultra-precise surgery to remove early-stage tumours; portable, quantum-enhanced imaging capabilities to enable rapid examination at bedsides; and new sensing platforms to provide new insights into disease evolution, early detection, and drug monitoring.

Mission 4: by 2030, quantum navigation systems, including clocks, will be deployed on aircraft, providing next-generation accuracy for resilience that is independent of satellite signals.

This mission will develop and commercially exploit quantum navigation systems that are small enough to be deployed on aircraft (amongst other transport systems), combining technologies such as quantum clocks, accelerometers, and rotation sensors/gyroscopes, as well as embedding technologies for ultra-precise mapping. It forms part of a longer-term aim to reach chip-scale – unlocking the ability to integrate these systems into mobile phone-sized systems – and will therefore include facilitation of the fabrication and manufacturing capabilities needed to achieve this. The approach will deliver on a core element of the government’s Position, Navigation & Timing (PNT) Policy Framework published on 18th October 2023 (point 10) to accelerate R&D into quantum navigation and the next generation of optical clocks. The mission will target outcomes to:

• Bridge the ‘valley of death’ by pulling-through promising research in quantum navigation systems and demonstrating their integration into moving platforms, bringing together innovators, systems integrators and researchers towards a common goal.
• Reduce the size, weight and power of current capabilities to enable systems integration and increase usability.
• Develop ‘adoption layers’ to support understanding of the technology and how to embed it in wider transport systems.
• Demonstrate capabilities in real-world settings, de-risking adoption for businesses.
• Exploit the commercial opportunity by taking a UK lead in frontier navigation technology, opening up further opportunities across areas such as robotics and drones.
• Provide additional resilience to the UK in the face of GNSS-denial through delivery of independent systems and more precise timing in the future.

Mission 5: by 2030, mobile, networked quantum sensors will have unlocked new situational awareness capabilities, exploited across critical infrastructure in the transport, telecoms, energy, and defence sectors.

This mission focuses on enhancing the capacity and resilience of critical national infrastructure, with significant benefits in cost reduction and supporting Net Zero ambitions. It addresses a core challenge across quantum sensing capabilities, where individual sectors and businesses see the bridge to exploitation and adoption into existing systems as too high risk to fund alone. This mission will therefore focus on accelerating the development of common technological capabilities to catalyse the private investment needed to pull through to adoption. By the end of the mission, key sectors will have deployed these new capabilities in industrial settings, with further exploitation opportunities around the world being realised. Expected applications include:

• Transport: These systems will revolutionise asset management and planning in the transport sector, unleashing underground sensing capabilities that improve the monitoring and maintenance of subsurface attributes.
• Telecoms: Provide next generation quantum-enabled sensors for capacity building and resilience. For example, high-bandwidth RF sensors or resilient optical links.
• Energy: Protect and support energy storage and transportation through quantum-enabled gas sensors to accurately see and measure emissions of greenhouse and other gases.
• Defence: The significantly increased ability through these systems to find objects in challenging environments will unlock a range of applications throughout the defence sector.

1. 1 trillion operations refers to the number of operations a quantum computer can perform before a single logical error occurs. This compares to a few hundred error free quantum operations on today’s fastest machines. It is estimated such a task could take between a few minutes and a few days depending on the design of the computer. Timing expectations will be further defined as the mission programme progresses. ↩