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Navy Got 'UFO' Patent Granted by Warning of Similar Chinese Tech Advances
- nprateem 7y agoWell since foo fighters [1] were spotted during the Second World War and I doubt the US patented designs for the F117 stealth bomber several decades before it was revealed, I'd put this in the class of psyops. If they don't know what's flying those things or what they are, better to blame the Chinese instead of little green/grey men and get people all concerned. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter
- bhaak 7y agoI'm having a hard time parsing the last sentence. Is it "blame Chinese and (not aliens) and get people concerned (to be aware/do something" or "blame Chinese and (not alien and not get people concerned)"?
- nprateem 7y agoThe latter. I mean just make everyone think it's the Chinese so they won't worry about it. "Oh it's just the Chinese and we're developing our own version" is much less scary than "It's something that acts with total impunity in our airspace and we haven't got a clue what it is, how it works or where it's from". It must have been pretty obvious to the Navy this story would have been picked up by the media and widely circulated.
- Abishek_Muthian 7y ago>(HAUC), which can function as a submersible craft capable of extreme underwater speeds (lack of water-skin friction) Chinese advancement in frictionless supercavitating submarines are already well known[1]. But claiming that they have the capability to do so with EM propulsion is something new. What's more bewildering to me is that the patent fiasco surround this. AFAIK state of the art defence tech rarely gets through patent system for obvious reasons, TIL that U.S. Patent system has a way to file secret patents and even that wasn't used in this case. Not sure whether they filed this patent with PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty), then they would be eligible to submit this patent application for review in other countries as well. [1]: https://www.popsci.com/article/technology/chinas-future-submarine-could-go-speed-sound/ https://www.popsci.com/article/technology/chinas-future-subm...
- samstave 7y agoWhat are the speeds at which a super cavitating submarine must be at to optimally function?
- andrewflnr 7y agoIf these are all public patents, why haven't a couple dozen university labs taken a stab at building them or at least verifying the principles? This is something where I would expect even negative results to be newsworthy. Anyway, it seems to me that the options have narrowed to human tech or psyops. Invoking aliens just doesn't help with any of the observations.
- pinkfoot 7y agoBecuase university labs only do something once: 1. they are sure a stream of publishable papers will flow from it 2. they get grant funding.
- empath75 7y agoI mean building a room temperature super conductor would surely get you a Nobel prize.
- IshKebab 7y agoBecause they're obvious nonsense. It would be a complete waste of time. Also pretty embarrassing if anyone found out you were trying to replicate this crack pottery.
- krapp 7y agoDon't you mean it's... patent nonsense? I'll get my coat.
- bayareanative 7y agoRush to provisionally-patent what may or may not exist. Monetize the little green Martians' tech even before meeting them. Good thinking. Even if it doesn't exist, it's still better to gamble on the off chance it does.
- ru999gol 7y agoseems like you just go way out of your way to still be able to continue to deny that the US is reverse engineering UFO tech for a long time.
- woodruffn 7y agoI've seen two variants of this fly over my house in Colorado a few years ago. Giant triangular craft moving silently at insane speed - clearing the entire night sky in 7 seconds, appeared to be the size of an aircraft carrier. They have 5 very dim white points of light underneath that outline their triangle shape. I wouldn't even believe my own eyes except that my wife shared the experience with me.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- monk_e_boy 7y agoNo pics?
- woodruffn 7y agoThe events only lasted a few seconds and even as I was pointing at it and shouting to my wife - it took her a moment to realize what was happening and she nearly missed it. I can't take a convincing photo of the moon. This would have been impossible.
- su30mki117 7y agoIf you cannot take a convincing photo of the moon, you should stop talking about UFOs and instead focus on learning to take a convincing photo of the moon. I hope you get the point. This is not an attempt to ridicule you, just pointing out the amount of ridiculousness in your post.
- boatman_ 7y agoMaybe you should enlighten us with examples and procedures.
- su30mki117 7y agoExamples and procedures to take a convincing photo of the moon - you need google and some money for the equipment. Examples and procedures to take a convincing photo of an erratically moving UFO - I don't claim I have the know-how. All I know is the evidence has to be high quality and irrefutable to make such a claim. My point is, people should not be talking about phenomena they don't understand as if they are true, if they have no skills to gather required evidence.
- DigitalTerminal 7y agoThis is a really interesting article, thanks for sharing it. Whether the tic-tacs are Chinese, American, or alien, this just seems to add the the evidence that they are real, and the public nature of the patent application seems to fit within the narrative of a managed disclosure.
- sandworm101 7y ago>> ...the public nature of the patent application seems to fit within the narrative of a managed disclosure. No. The patent application fits with the narrative that the US patent process is a total joke. This is an attempt to patent science fiction. This patent will be used for everything but the production of a working technology. It will be used by someone to aggrandize themselves and potentially milk "investors". They will wave this "patent" in front of some naive old people, probably in florida, to get them to sign over their life savings. If anyone on this planet has practical warp drive technology, friction-free motion through air/water, or gravity manipulation tech ... such things are akin to the discovery of fire. In the real world, whether the inventor has a patent or not is absolutely meaningless in the face of what such technology would mean to mankind.
- nyolfen 7y agoi don't think the US navy typically solicits donations from retirees. it seems to me more likely to be misdirection for rival militaries as others have suggested.
- sandworm101 7y agoNo, but crackpot inventors do. The charlatan tells people that he has invented a magic airplane technology. He the points to the US navy patent as 'proof' that such tech is possible. If his name is on the patent, all the better. The US navy is a very large organization. I doubt this is a core program. This is some crazy think-tank operating way way outside oversight. Or it is an elaborate joke. Or an attempt to pad a resume before retirement. Or a "patent something or you're out" box ticking.
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- sandworm101 7y agoObligatory Xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1235/ https://xkcd.com/1235/
- plutonorm 7y agoI find this scary. Because: Say this technology isn't that hard, say that we are actually technologically capable of making this a reality? Of making a craft that can basically separate itself off from the rest of the universe and flit off to wherever it wants with impunity? That means that there are very likely many many other alien species out there who have similar capability. And those species don't actually have to be that smart or advanced, they could be just as violent and messed up as we are. And they could be zipping in and out of our atmosphere all the time. I guess this is the first time I've considered that this whole UFO/alien thing might be real. God, this might be why they all look the same - the underlying technology requires the same basic external shape... but the craft could be from different civilisations.
- svd4anything 7y agoRelated discussion previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19760727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19760727
- georgewsinger 7y ago“High Frequency Gravitational Wave Generator"? Isn't this the technology reported to be seen by the infamous Bob Lazar in the late 80s? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar
- ohheywow 7y agoNever heard of him, just looked him up and it turns out he was on Joe Rogan last week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEWz4SXfyCQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEWz4SXfyCQ
- bayareanative 7y agoTinfoil attention seeker or big claims/flimsy evidence pleader. There's also a lot of lonely, sad people who say the FBI's watching them and have a file on them... delusions of grandeur.
- kekebo 7y agoI used to have a similar stance, especially given the outlandish nature of his claims, but a lot of things he said that were initially used against him after the Knapp interview turned out to be accurate over time. His supposed prediction of the discovery of Moscovium ("Element 115") still puzzles me. Not that that's proving anything but it gives me a harder time to entirely dismiss it. The Joe Rogan interview linked in sibling comment is an interesting follow up to the initial interviews with George Knapp from the late 80s.
- libertine 7y agoWell one could say that it would be a matter of time before someone discovered the Element 115 - what's curious is that he seems pretty confident when he says that, when we will have a stable version of the element (if ever), it will have the same properties he claims it has.
- novaleaf 7y agokeep in mind though, that it's no longer delusions of grandeur to suspect a 3 letter agency watching you. Just matter of fact. Just make an international phone call with a non-citizen, for the most obvious example. Slightly less obvious is just walking around outside if you are within 20 miles of a big city or an international border. To me, that I still look at these guys claims of spooks watching them with incredulity is a bit disturbing. They were obviously nuts, but now it's a fact of life? Totally bizarre.
- egfx 7y agoRelated comment about it being related to a recent cern experiment.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18367198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18367198
- keldaris 7y agoThe only thing scary about this is that apparently this "U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise", whatever it is, is a den of crackpots. As a European physicist I'm not familiar enough with how research is managed in the U.S. military, so the fact that this kind of pseudo-science is tolerated is mind boggling to me. Anyone have any insight on what institutional factors might have led to this?
- libertine 7y ago> "U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise", whatever it is, is a den of crackpots Isn't that a bit condescending way to address such organization? Of all the possible justifications, you point to the weakest one imo: that it is ran by ignorant people who are detached from reality when it comes to these matters, to the point of coming out to publicly state they did/are/aim/want to work on something. It's like the eat anything crazy it's thrown at them. I mean, you could say: "It's just propaganda - they either want to diverge attention so we don't focus on something else (like decrease the warmongering status), or get attention to try to get something (like support/resources)." - Which is believe is the most likely one. It's a odd behavior, but I doubt it's a byproduct of ignorance and belief in pseudo-science.
- keldaris 7y ago> Isn't that a bit condescending way to address such organization? It would be if their CTO hadn't personally endorsed the "scientific" content of this patent in his letter to the patent office. In light of that, it's hard for me to see a different explanation than either "incompetent scientists" or "incompetent propagandists" (because the patent is a blatant joke to anyone with a science education), hence my reaction. I'm open to a different explanation, hence my question to those better versed in the mysteries of the U.S. military-industrial-scientific complex.
- libertine 7y agoI understand what you're saying. For sure there's a lot of things wrong with this: - the "scientific" content; - the approval/publishing of the patent based on such content; - the news reporting of such content without further research, just for the sake of being a patent and not questioning it's validity in the light of our current scientific knowledge; - The propagation of such information; If it's deliberate or fruit of a lot of layers of ignorance, we can't know for sure but there's a high probability of both.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wbhart 7y agoThey seem to be confusing friction due to interaction with air and water with inertial mass. This is crackpottery at the highest level. It's a bunch of technobabble. How does writing a patent for a device that obviously can't work as described achieve anything. They can't come along years later and say, oh we invented that, if something similar emerges, as it will be abundantly clear from the nonsense description that they did not invent it.
- empath75 7y agoThere seem to be two plausible reasons for getting such a patent — the navy genuinely thinks this is just around the corner and doesn’t want to pay extortionate license fees to an American company to use it or they want China to think we are pursuing such a technology and want them to waste resources pursuing it themselves.
- wbhart 7y agoThe first doesn't seem plausible for the reason I gave. The second occurred to me. But how stupid do they think the Chinese are? If the top Chinese military researchers really have such a poor grasp of physics, then their research efforts present no difficulties for the security of the US. The only serious explanation I can come up with is that buried in this application is some element of the design which is feasible and which they do want to protect. But even that seems unlikely, given that they could have just made it secret. Another less likely explanation is that someone in the navy is playing a prank on the public and the patent office. If the person who submitted the application doesn't actually exist, the navy might have trouble tracking down the perpetrator of the hoax. One final possibility is that it is a recruiting tool. Perhaps by making this public they get a bunch of correspondence from talented individuals who capably point out that is nonsense, or that are capable of doing experiments that demonstrate parts of the patent to be nonfeasible.
- empath75 7y agoPossibly also they do have some real advanced program that actually is working and they want a smokescreen up to explain it. Maybe some new stealth craft or propulsion or guidance system that is a normal leap forward. Maybe a drone with especially advanced ai guidance systems that allows for more maneuverability. Something the Chinese could copy if they knew how it worked. Or the reverse — that we have discovered some system the Chinese created and are trying to copy it and want them to think we have gotten it wrong.
- bufferoverflow 7y agoDon't you need to show a working prototype to get a patent?
- _ph_ 7y agoNo, you only need to describe the nature of your invention - you don't even need to claim that it works or you could get it implemented.
- dsr_ 7y agoAn awfully large number of patents wouldn't exist if there was a requirement to show a working example of each claim. I would prefer such a requirement.
- partiallypro 7y agoThat might be ok for some patents that require simple examples, but for complex patents that a working model would cost millions... Good luck getting an investor without a patent.
- partiallypro 7y agoMy question is, why would the US patent a secret technology? I don't think we patent the materials used on the F-35, etc... Those are top secret.
- glenneroo 7y ago> Maybe the Navy is signaling to its adversaries that it, too, is aware of this revolutionary capability and to whom it belongs.
- electrograv 7y agoTLDR: The claims and descriptions in these Navy patents exactly match the “leaked technical descriptions” from many conspiracy theories over the past 30-40 years claiming that the US government has secret craft capable of defying the current known limits of aerodynamics and propulsion. Antigravity conspiracy theories has been a favorite source of fascination/amusement for me for a long time (see my username), and I cannot describe how eerie and weird it feels to read official Navy patents and claims by ex-head of Lockheed Martin skunkworks literally corroborating some of conspiracy theories I’ve heard going around for decades. (Yet the skeptic in my brain still won’t allow me to fully believe it until I see a working prototype.) The whole story here is just so utterly bizarre; the deeper you dig, the weirder it gets. These TheDrive articles seem to do a great job of investigating and reporting on the facts without too much speculation, and I highly recommend diving down the rabbit hole of linked articles (especially on this connected “To The Stars Academy” organization making similar claims of incredible technology by a panel of founders with astoundingly impressive and official credentials). To add to the strangeness of the Navy patents: the actual patent contents reads almost like gibberish, or the kind of pseudoscientific technobabble you’d write to add scientific explanations of space ships to a sci-fi novel. If the technical descriptions and phenomena are real, then these patents really are describing or hinting at new physics, but in a way that misuses existing terms and reexplains obvious basics of physics with what seems like amateurish imprecision (like referring to cross products as “multiplication”) — which just doesn’t make sense at all given the credentials of those vouching for the patents. Yet, the descriptions match almost exactly the rumors and conspiracy theories of how electrogravitic propulsion systems of secret military craft worked. And, they describe something that should be testable even without a room temperature superconductor (one could take a charged super capacitor and spin it and/or vibrate it at extreme frequencies and see if this has any measurable effect on its inertial or gravitational mass), which intrigues me. Look into the “TR-3B” or “Aurora project” conspiracy theory and you’ll find tales and descriptions of the crafts antigravity drive that is absolutely identical to what is described in these patents: a superconducting medium carrying an extremely high charge density, that is rotated and vibrated are incredibly high frequencies — and this is claimed to somehow reduce the inertial mass of the surrounding area. This TR-3B conspiracy theory is decades old, at least, and it matches these official government patents exactly. It’s almost as if someone took some of the most intriguing rumors or conspiracy theories of secret government craft from decades ago, and started filing patents from extremely official government sources on exactly the kind of tech that was rumored to exist; yet in a way that sounds much like pseudoscience to anyone educated in modern physics. This is the kind of thing which, based on the content itself, you’d immediately dismiss as a crackpot conspiracy theory technobabble. But the highly official credentials of the source of these patents, and of the people claiming or hinting that the tech is real (the ex-head of Lockheed Martin skunkworks — it doesn’t get much more credible than that) makes it impossible to ignore in that way. So I honestly don’t know what to make of any of this. It would be interesting to try experimenting with some of the testable claims that these patents describe.
- xibalba 7y agoThe high proportion of green usernames in this thread makes this all feel a lot like an info op.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoWhat? I counted 3 green user names and total of 6 comments they made. The thread has 73 comments in total as I'm writing this.
- glenneroo 7y agoNot to mention any serious info op attempts would have accounts created on every relevant forum and thus wouldn't require creating very-obviously new accounts to further their agenda.
- xibalba 7y agoThis was my lame attempt at parodying what does seem to be the theme of this thread: crackpot conspiracy theories.
- est31 7y agoSee also: fast movers program.
- svd4anything 7y agohttps://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25784/what-u-s-submariners-actually-say-about-detection-of-so-called-unidentified-submerged-objects https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25784/what-u-s-submari...
- gingabriska 7y agoSince this patent is not "secret" even tho there are ways to keep it secret and heck you don't even need to patent it if you've such technology. What does a patent say? Basically that you can create and use it today which would be alarming for most around the world. What if it's a bait for other intelligence agencies/spies working for foreign governments in US defense area. And if someone tried to gather info about this tech within US defense ecosystem, they'll be caught without US government risking anything. It does look like a bait to me, publicise that you poses a technology which makes all your enemies obsolete then wait and watch who is coming or helping them steal it from you.
- fnord77 7y agosurely intelligence agencies are smart enough to realize this is probably bait and not bother with it?
- flycaliguy 7y agoUnless it’s just a bread crumb which links to other bread crumbs which all lead to nothing at all. It could resemble an optical illusion we’ve been projecting around every once and a while?
- nullwasamistake 7y agoClearly misdirection. The question is, what are they hiding? The Navy decided to admit these craft exist then misdirects about how they work. My guess, they're nuclear powered aircraft of some kind. Maybe conventional besides that, maybe not. You can get such obscene power density with nuclear that the ideal craft may just be an engine with a cowling around it. Efficiency is not a concern so nuclear aircraft are going to look a lot different. It's the only reason I can think of that Navy would be trying to cover up how they work. The idea of nuclear reactors zipping around in the air is terrifying.
- georgeburdell 7y ago> The concept is fairly simple, although the engineering required to make it a reality is anything but. All matter contains energy on the quantum level. By theoretically creating its own incredibly dense and polarized energy field, the hybrid craft is claimed to be able to create a quantum 'vacuum' around itself which allows it to repel any air or water molecules with which it interacts. As a PhD in physics, this just sounds like nonsense to me. Energy isn't a field and to polarize it doesn't mean anything. > Little information can be found about Salvatore Cezar Pais; he has virtually no web presence. What is known is that he received a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in 1999 and that he currently works as an aerospace engineer for NAWCAD at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland – the Navy’s top aircraft test base. Pais has published several articles and presented papers at American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conferences over the years describing his work in electromagnetic propulsion, revolutionary room temperature superconductors, and topics like his PhD dissertation: "Bubble generation under reduced gravity conditions for both co-flow and cross-flow configurations." My sample size is small at ~5, but former classmates who joined the military research labs were not the brightest bunch. Of my overall cohort, the smartest ones went into industry, sometimes a different industry than their field of study. The smart but idealistic ones went into academia. And then the ones that truly never shed their sophomoric arrogance, acquired in their formative years and that should have been beaten out of them by the doctoral process, went to the military labs to work on secret stuff. It may have been true in the past, but military labs don't have the cachet to attract top talent. With that being said, the most likely reason for this patent filing, as others have noted, is misdirection.
- keldaris 7y ago> As a PhD in physics, this just sounds like nonsense to me. Energy isn't a field and to polarize it doesn't mean anything. That part is just a terrible attempt by the journalist to summarize the theoretical background of the patent's (rather ludicrous) claims in a popular form. The polarization they're talking about is just the vacuum polarization in the standard QED sense. The funny stuff starts when the patent assumes that you can automagically generate fields close to or over the Schwinger limit. As a fellow physics PhD, I recommend reading the actual patent for comic relief [1]. It has no other use as far as I can tell. [1] https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/de/4c/43/62c585ccc936cc/US10144532.pdf https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/de/4c/43/62c585c...
- nickpsecurity 7y agoAll this stuff was on those alternative science and energy sites (below) I looked at ages ago. The ones with lifters, ZPE, gravitational wave weapons, and so on. One I thought was interesting was Townsend Brown with the claim he and others did antigravity research with practical applications. The B2 was most likely source of funding at one point given (a) it was enormously expensive and (b) some of its traits matched the ones in Brown's antigravity designs. Most of the stuff on those sites looked like BS, though. I don't know about Brown and this recent guy, though. This could also be disinformation to get Chinese to waste time on it. It has plus side that they can patent sue them if they do find anything. EDIT: This was one of the sites. Just came back to me. https://www.americanantigravity.com/tim-ventura-on-antigravity https://www.americanantigravity.com/tim-ventura-on-antigravi...
- ackfoo 7y agoFolie à deux. One researcher convinces a non-technical administrator that they have made a breakthrough. The administrator trusts the researcher, and others trust the administrator. No one ever looks at the details and goes, "Wait! This is nonsense!" I've seen it a thousand times in business. The Navy is not immune.