IonQ AFRL Award Targets Free-Space Quantum Links

IonQ’s quantum network at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, New York, is moving to a second phase that would send entangled light through open air as well as along fibre. IonQ said on 27 October that it has received $7.5 million in follow-on funding from AFRL for the work.

The money is not extra. IonQ says the award “was contemplated within the originally-announced amount and is not a supplemental award”. In other words, it is paid out of the $21.1 million collaboration that IonQ announced in January 2025, which it set up through its networking subsidiary Qubitekk.

What Phase 2 adds to the Rome network

IonQ says Phase 1 “established the core physical network foundation”. Phase 2 is meant to let AFRL connect different types of quantum hardware outside laboratory conditions. The company lists four upgrades:

Free-space optical links. An optical system with automatic pointing, acquisition and tracking, to distribute entanglement over line-of-sight channels in the C-band, the wavelength range used by most long-distance telecom fibre.
Quantum frequency converters. Two modules that change the wavelength of photons so different quantum and classical hardware can work together over standard telecom infrastructure.
Automated control software. On-site software for self-tests, real-time monitoring, failure handling, running experiments and exporting results.
Upgraded hardware. O-band network hardware, better polarisation control and upgraded quantum network interface cards.

Jordan Shapiro, IonQ’s president for its quantum platform, said: “We are unlocking new domains for quantum networking by going to free space optics.” He added that “advanced optical hardware and automated control software are what close the gap between laboratory demonstration and field deployment”.

IonQ has not published a timetable for Phase 2 or said how many nodes the network will have when it is finished.

AFRL’s side of the project

AFRL’s Information Directorate in Rome runs its own quantum networking research. Its trapped-ion team says on an AFRL fact sheet that its goal is to “distribute entanglement between and within both homogenous (trapped ion) and heterogeneous (trapped ion, quantum photonic integrated circuits, superconducting qubits) quantum network nodes”. It has labs on its own campus and at the Innovare Advancement Center, the site where IonQ said in 2025 it would install network infrastructure. The fact sheet does not mention IonQ or the new award, and AFRL has not published its own statement.

IonQ says the upgrades support “AFRL’s broader roadmap for heterogeneous quantum networking” and are designed for “real-world metropolitan and defense networks”. Its January 2025 release said the two expected to “establish free-space optical links from ground stations to drones”. The new release mentions free-space links but not drones.

Why free-space links and converters are the hard part

A fibre network can only reach places where fibre has been laid. A line-of-sight optical link removes that constraint, which is why free-space work matters for linking sites without a cable between them. It brings its own problem: the two ends have to find each other and stay locked together, which is the job of the pointing, acquisition and tracking system IonQ describes.

The frequency converters address a different gap. Quantum processors and memories produce photons at their own natural wavelengths, which rarely match the telecom bands that existing networks carry. Shifting those photons is what would let a trapped-ion system share a network with other kinds of quantum hardware. That is the “heterogeneous” goal AFRL’s own team sets out.

Both pieces build on lab results IonQ has reported elsewhere. Earlier this month it claimed a link between a trapped-ion qubit and a solid-state memory at more than 1,000 entangled pairs a second, a laboratory result in a preprint that had not been peer-reviewed. Rome is where that kind of work is supposed to leave the bench.

The financial weight is modest. Set against IonQ’s $2.0 billion equity offering this month and its planned all-stock purchase of Elisity, $7.5 million is small, and it was already part of a deal announced 21 months ago. For anyone tracking IonQ’s government work, it is a tranche of an existing contract rather than a new order. The company has also been building its civilian footprint, including a quantum innovation centre at the University of Cambridge.

The real test is whether the Rome network can hold entangled links through open air outside the lab, the gap Shapiro himself names between demonstration and deployment.