[avianlyric]

100%, but smoke screen is over selling it. From the article

> The project is being carried out in collaboration with Transport for London, QinetiQ, PA Consulting, Imperial College London and University of Sussex.

QinetiQ is a UK weapons developer, probably the UKs largest. So the defence angle isn’t really being hidden.

Older articles on this project from elsewhere outline the defence angle even more explicitly:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/15/lond...

But IanVisits is a transport focused blog, so the article has a transport focus, rather than a defence focus.

As to why any of this is happening on the underground, that’s pretty simple. Tube trains are a good real world test bed for this technology. Shove your quantum box on an existing train, drive it through the existing tunnels a few times as part of a normal tube service. Compare the run result and validate how accurate your technology is.

It’s a lot cheaper than putting it on a boat or a submarine. Not to mention Imperial College London is based in… London. They’re literally a five minute walk from a tube station.

[123pie123]

I had missed the collaboration list,

being tested on trains makes complete sense