Over my 25+ years of delivering solutions for national defense and aerospace needs, I’ve seen firsthand how powerful technology can manage finite resources, especially in mission-critical national security environments.

Since joining D-Wave, I’ve been impressed to see how quantum-powered solutions can today address the need for faster decision-making, tighter coordination, and increased resilience beyond what classical-only approaches can offer.

Quantum optimization offers government organizations a new approach to complex  problem-solving, enabling the analysis of large, multidimensional scenarios to support faster, more informed decision-making. That’s not theoretical—it’s operational today, delivering value to D-Wave customers now.

How Public Sector Organizations Are Using Quantum Computing to Improve Planning and Decision-making

Quantum computing can often optimize complex problems, simulate battlefield operations, and improve resource allocation, to enable faster, more reliable decision-making for warfighters than legacy solutions alone.

At D-Wave, we’re working with partners to apply quantum technologies to challenges such as:

• Davidson Technologies and Anduril Industries aim to use quantum-classical hybrid solutions for complex U.S. air and missile defense planning challenges.

• North Wales Police Department built and tested a hybrid-quantum application to optimize placement of police vehicles for emergency response, providing the ability to reduce the average incident response time by nearly 50%.

• The US Army Engineer Research and Development Center explored using quantum computing to optimize wildfire prevention.

• Commercial applications for quantum-powered autonomous vehicles in agriculture and manufacturing could translate to large-scale military operations.

Scaling AI for The Public Sector: The Case for Energy-Efficient Quantum Computing

As the AI boom continues to drive an explosive surge in computational demands, it’s more important than ever to explore new pathways to energy efficient computing, including quantum computing. Early research is starting to show that quantum computing could reduce the computational power required to run AI or other advanced computational workloads. A recent Science publication demonstrated that D-Wave’s quantum computer solved a complex magnetic materials simulation in minutes—using just 12 kilowatts of power. For context, the same problem would have taken one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers nearly a million years to solve, consuming more electricity than the world uses in a year.

That kind of efficiency shift could have major implications, and we’re starting to explore how quantum and AI could work better together with customers. For example, Shionogi is collaborating with D-Wave to explore how to leverage quantum computing and AI in the drug discovery process. The work demonstrated that quantum-AI hybrid models that used classical computation together with D-Wave’s annealing quantum computers resulted in more valid generated molecules when compared to classical methods alone.

As quantum continues to mature, we believe it will increasingly offer federal leaders a practical path to measurably improve performance across the mission spectrum—from contested logistics and operational planning to other critical public sector priorities.

We’re just starting to scratch the surface of quantum’s capabilities for military operations, government, and the public sector. If your organization is exploring where quantum can accelerate mission success, I’d welcome the discussion.