Why military reconnaissance and surveillance drone data links must adopt post-quantum encryption today.
Adversary intelligence services routinely intercept and store encrypted video feeds and telemetry broadcast by border patrol, police, and defense drones, archiving the data for future quantum decryption.
Reconnaissance footage revealing forward operating base layouts, sensor locations, and intelligence patrol routes remains highly sensitive for decades. Decrypting that data 10 years from now severely compromises national security.
Deploying hybrid classical-PQC encryption protocols guarantees forward secrecy: even if an adversary captures every byte of radio traffic today, no future quantum computer will be able to reconstruct the flight data.