American company IonQ has secured an additional $28 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to scale up production of its Evergreen-05 compact optical atomic clocks. Under the agreement with the agency, also known as DARPA, the firm will manufacture and deliver a total of 125 units for United States government customers.
The deal falls under DARPA's It's About Time program, which aims to create autonomous, ultra-precise timing systems that operate without satellite navigation. The clocks are designed for radar, secure communications, high-precision navigation, and geolocation in environments where GPS signals are jammed or unavailable.
Shoebox Size and Precision
Evergreen-05 combines extreme accuracy with a body volume of about five liters, roughly the size of a shoebox. Traditional laboratory optical atomic clocks normally require entire equipment racks. Engineers designed the compact system for use outside laboratories on ground vehicles, ships, and aircraft.
The device maintains timing stability of 50 femtoseconds per second and keeps nanosecond precision for ten days without an external time source. IonQ said this level of performance equals an error of less than one second over roughly 30 million years.
Manufacturing Investment and History
IonQ is investing an extra $15 million of its own funds to expand production for the order. The money will build specialized manufacturing facilities, purchase equipment, set up testing infrastructure, and hire staff as the firm moves toward full serial production.
IonQ acquired the Evergreen-05 technology when it bought startup Vector Atomic in 2025. DARPA has funded development of the clocks since 2019 through its Robust Optical Clock Network program, with the new contract marking the next step toward practical deployment.
