APRIL 9, 2026 — At Air University, student officers are working through a problem that doesn’t have established doctrine yet but is already starting to matter: how the Joint Force accounts for quantum capabilities before they begin to affect operational decision-making.
Through the Air University Innovation Accelerator, the Alpha Blue team developed Project Decoherence, an effort focused on how adversarial quantum systems might be contested before they create operational impact. Instead of treating quantum like something far off, the team approached it as a planning problem leaders can begin working through now, especially as the Joint Force continues to focus on readiness and maintaining advantage against pacing threats.
That’s where this fits forAir University. It’s not just about education. It’s about developing joint warfighters while also helping solve problems that affect how the force plans and operates.
Lt. Col. Jamie Cornett, an Air War College student at Air University, said early on the team realized they had to make the problem useful, not just understandable.
“Quantum is often discussed in terms of potential,” Cornett said. “We wanted to understand what it means for the force and what decisions it should inform now.”
The Alpha Blue team includes officers from across Air University, along with international partners studying alongside their U.S. counterparts. Those perspectives helped shape how the team approached the problem, especially when considering how quantum capabilities may be understood and applied across different operational environments.
Instead of focusing on building quantum capability, the team flipped the problem. They looked at how it could be limited. The concept centers on quantum decoherence, the inherent instability of quantum systems, and how that fragility might constrain how an adversary could use those capabilities in practice.
The project doesn’t try to predict exactly how quantum will be used. It gives planners and leaders a way to start factoring it into campaign design, force development and risk conversations now instead of reacting later.
Maj. Thomas E. Accuosti, an Air Command and Staff College student at Air University, said that shift was intentional.
“The goal wasn’t just to describe the problem,” Accuosti said. “It was to show how it affects decisions and how a planner or commander would actually use it.”
To support that approach, the team built a set of connected pieces. A “journey paper” walks through how they worked the problem, including the friction that comes with translating technical concepts into something operational. A foundational education package helps Air University students, and the broader force get comfortable with the basics of quantum without needing a technical background. An interactive prototype puts users in a decision-making role, allowing planners and operators to explore how different approaches to countering quantum capabilities affect risk, timing and adversary response.
A strategic white paper ties those efforts together, outlining how these ideas could inform doctrine, force design and future professional military education across Air University and the Joint Force. Taken together, the work gives leaders a starting point they can use as they begin to account for quantum in planning and development.
At a broader level, that’s the point. Air University isn’t trying to produce perfect answers. It’s working to close the gap between emerging technology and how the force thinks, plans and operates. Projects like this give leaders a way to start integrating new problems earlier instead of waiting until they’re forced to react.
For Cornett, that’s where the value is.
“If we wait until this is fully realized, we’re already behind,” she said. “This gives leaders a way to start accounting for it now.”
Project Decoherence is meant to keep evolving. As more perspectives come in across Air University and from Joint Force partners, the work can be refined and pulled into planning discussions with the Joint Staff, combatant commands and the Department of the Air Force.
The effort includes contributions from international officers assigned to Air University, reinforcing the importance of allied perspectives in shaping how emerging challenges are understood and addressed across the Joint Force.
Even small steps in that direction reinforce Air University’s role as a warfighting institution that develops joint warfighters and contributes to how the force is developed, resourced and employed.
Story by Billy Blankenship
Air University Public Affairs