The team is developing revolutionary quantum technology, aiming to create miniaturised atomic clocks powerful enough to fit inside smartphones and protect the UK from crippling GPS blackouts. This groundbreaking tech could soon make Britain a global leader in secure navigation, impervious to external interference.

Top Time Lord at UK's timing laboratories at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Helen Margolis, is working on a new atomic clock to solve the GPS problem.

"Without GPS, our society is incredibly vulnerable. We must build robust systems to work everywhere—even on battlefields," she said.

The ultimate vision is for each of us to carry a personal GPS in our smartphones. This would include a miniaturised optical clock, a tiny gyroscope for direction, and an accelerometer to measure speed.

The urgency of their mission was underscored recently when a Boeing 737 MAX 8-200, operated by Ryanair, dramatically aborted landing just 850 feet above Lithuania after its GPS signal was mysteriously jammed. Pilots were forced into an emergency climb and a 250-mile diversion to Warsaw, Poland.

Suspicions are rising that Russian jamming technology is responsible.  This is despite Moscow's denials and the new US government insisting that Russian hackers are not a threat and that people should be concentrating on immigration instead.

However, in the real world, former British Defence Secretary Grant Shapps experienced GPS signal loss while flying close to Russian airspace last March.

GPS jamming can devastate financial systems, electricity grids, and military operations, costing Britain billions daily.

Boffins at the government's Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) are pushing a sensitive quantum technology to operate in the real world—which, for the Navy, often means choppy seas—and in battlefield conditions.

A lead DSTL researcher said: "We are harnessing atoms. You have vibrations, pressure changes, temperature changes, and environments, which have all of these different variables going on while trying to manipulate light's properties. So, precision is needed."