9 ms·

Navy speaks up about its “UFO patent” experiments

96 points by samizdis 6y ago

electrograv 6y ago
Here’s the TLDR: > - The High Energy Electromagnetic Field Generator testing occurred from October 2016 through September 2019; > - The cost was $508,000 over the course of three years. Around ninety percent of the total - $462,000 - was for salaries, while the rest was used for equipment, test preparation, testing and assessment. > - When NAWCAD concluded testing in September 2019, the “Pais Effect” could not be proven. > Despite the fact that NAWCAD says the experiments ended in September 2019 without proving the “Pais Effect,” the inventor asserted to The War Zone in a November 18, 2019 email that his work “culminates in the enablement of the Pais Effect” and that “as far as the doubting SMEs [Subject Matter Experts] are concerned, my work shall be proven correct one fine day…” However IMO what's really interesting is when we contrast this announcement of test failure with prior released documents showing that the Chief Technology Officer of the Naval Aviation Enterprise wrote a letter to the US Patent Office pressuring them to overturn a prior rejection of these patents, claiming that the technology is operable and that "China is already investing significantly in this area". Citation: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28729/docs-show-navy-got-ufo-patent-granted-by-warning-of-similar-chinese-tech-advances https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28729/docs-show-navy-g...
- keyle 6y ago
  That seems like such a low cost. How can a R&D project of this magnitude only cost that much in 3-4 years?
  - lallysingh 6y ago
    Mostly folks doing the math and simulations, I'd assume.
  - colechristensen 6y ago
    It doesn’t seem that unreasonable, mostly one guy in a lab chasing a theory. If it were any smaller scale the costs would be denominated in beer and garage space. Government salaries aren’t silicon valley salaries.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Any equipment used could have been repurposed from past projects, or borrowed from existing ones. If that's the case, it helps explain why they might green light the project even if it has a low expected chance of panning out. Might as well use it for something.
- bane 6y ago
  Well, the article says "operable" which just means there's a thing that works. But it doesn't say how well.
  - bonestamp2 6y ago
    It's also possible that they have something operational, whether they build it or came by it, but they don't know how it works and still wanted to patent it.
arkitaip 6y ago
> Despite every physicist we have spoken to over the better part of two years asserting that the "Pais Effect" has no scientific basis in reality and the patents related to it were filled with pseudo-scientific jargon, NAWCAD confirmed they were interested enough in the patents to spend more than a half-million dollars over three years developing experiments and equipment to test Pais' theories. That's such a low sum when it comes to military waste that leadership would have to be crazy not to spend it! /s
- wil421 6y ago
  > The cost was $508,000 over the course of three years. Around ninety percent of the total - $462,000 - was for salaries, while the rest was used for equipment, test preparation, testing and assessment. Well we know why it was a success for the scientist.
  - saberdancer 6y ago
    This probably has no net effect on the budget, people on the project were already on salary. Only loss is that Navy could have used these people on something more productive, but then again, I doubt Navy cares about productivity too much.
- tgflynn 6y ago
  It's a small amount of money for any physics experiment and absolutely tiny by the standards of government expenditure. I don't have a problem with them having done the experiment, I have a problem with the fact that they prematurely filed a patent and appear to have misrepresented the state of their research to get it approved over the objections of the patent examiners.
sandworm101 6y ago
508,000 cost. 462,00 salaries. That leaves 46,000 for equipment. Over three years that is roughly 15,300/year. Numbers that low in a government might be only office costs, desks, a few computers and maybe a big printer. I think this might make it the cheapest new-physics experiment in recent memory. The goal of this program seems to be to keep this guy on payroll. This guy knows something. It is probably totally unrelated to this "patent" but there is some reason the Navy wanted to keep him in their orbit.
- stupidcar 6y ago
  Another possibility could be office politics. Perhaps the researcher played golf or whatever with somebody quite senior and convinced them to back his pet project. The senior person's juniors know it's nonsense, but they fund the most bare-bones programme anyway in order to placate them.
- lallysingh 6y ago
  Or he did some good work in the past and they have him the benefit of the doubt. 462k/3 is 154k/yr. That's 1-2 scientists.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - willis936 6y ago
    Scientists make 80k/yr. For reference: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/scientist-salary-SRCH_KO0,9.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/scientist-salary-SRCH_KO0...
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      Yes, that is their salary but that isn't their total "cost". From the navy's budget perspective people cost much more than their actual salary (benefits, admin cost etc). Example. I work in the military. I am paid a salary. But, as a government employee I must take certain online courses (anti-bullying, sexual harassment, workplace safety). These are from another department but are budgeted as if they are from an outside organization. When I take the class, at no cost to me, the fee for that class moves from one pile of money (my unit's training budget) to another (the unit offering the course). Such expenses, even though internal to the larger organization, are budgeted by individual units. They are a cost associated with my employment but are not salary, tax, benefits or anything else employees might see on their paychecks. Such costs are real and must be anticipated whenever you hire people.
temp0826 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout
- JackFr 6y ago
  This was a key strategy in terms of deceiving my parents as a teenager. Never knew there was a name for it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
darkphoton 6y ago
I risk being shadowbanned again but this is my theory based on experience with CIA scientists. These types of exotic technologies and new physics aren’t possible due to hard physical laws in our reality. The only way to achieve such transformative technology is in reality where the nature of particle physics changed. According to Lawrence Krauss, there is nothing stopping the Higgs field from falling into a lower energy state. This would obviously change the mass of all particles and theoretically create a new cosmic electron. A 4th generation bosonic electron capable of occupying the same quantum wave function. Imagine if actual infinite reality was a 7th realm, and the higher world was a 6-cube with a 4th dimension to spatial reality. If you downprojected this into a 5-cube, you would lose one spatial reality and distort time from one infinite day into 365-days, inverting the arrow of time and inverting our consciousness. The affect of this would be the source of mystery, coincidence, romance but also self-destruction behaviors. All of this is predicated on human awareness and the ability to control emotions and separate yourself from the external world where deception and ignorance are forces of natures. The purpose is this is to provoke conscious thought to remind us that we are downprojected from a 6-cube where actual reality exists. The goal is to write the past in the future, then have the past create the future. This is a function of a cosmic simulation and a natural process for us to change our perception and thus transform the nature of particle physics. We build up the world through knowledge then switch it with understanding (secret of Chabad). It’s very much like the movie Tenet. My original account was notthegov but it is shadowbanned. I explained some of this on ChabadforHackers.com in an effort to get Presidential clemency for Ross Ulbricht and Drew Jones. I’m still working on freeing them via the ODNI and President Biden this year.
- zahrc 6y ago
  I haven't heard of the Tenet, can you elaborate on that, please?
  - dijksterhuis 6y ago
    It's a recent Christopher Nolan movie. I thought it was pretty good. https://chrisnolan.fandom.com/wiki/Tenet https://chrisnolan.fandom.com/wiki/Tenet
credit_guy 6y ago
This might be just a honeypot. The US Navy makes some noise about some stuff that has a slight chance of being possible, the adversary must react, and the reaction is potentially along the lines "how do we infiltrate that part of the organization, what assets do we have that can initiate contact", etc. If the end result is that the US Navy identifies some spies, the cost of half a million is absolutely nothing.
- Zigurd 6y ago
  The superconductor patent (I have not read the other ones) reads like a science fiction writer's extrapolation from real published papers on room temperature superconductors. If one wanted to create disinformation, to smoke out spies or whatever reason, about US secret capabilities this seems like a plausible approach.
- bewaretheirs 6y ago
  It also brought to mind this probably-apocryphal story (from Anton Braun Quist, "Excuse me... what was that?" (1982), a collection of engineering tall tales): "Secret Weapons" "The U.S. engineers perspired over their task, rapid development of several identical, extraordinarily complex machines. The work was finished on time, and the machines were flown away to be parachuted into various parts of Germany. It turned out that all the devices were discovered by the Germans." "Then the German engineers perspired, throwing heavy manpower and resources into examination of these new weapons. What were they for? They were designed to occupy a large number of German engineers; that's what. And they did."
- rozab 6y ago
  I was thinking more along the lines of all the effort the US put into ICBMs, mind control etc. in the cold war because they believed Russia had a huge technological advantage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap
Railsify 6y ago
These programs get approved because the approves are not scientists.
darkphoton 6y ago
My original account now shadowbanned. If you email me at q@illuminati.io I will forward anyone the original headers to this email. This message will be destroyed soon by your overlords at “Hacker News” — so sad that this is Y Combinator in 2021. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=notthegov https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=notthegov ** Here’s an example of the power of your own self reflective thoughts vs taking in external information. In this case, our opponent in this is an alleged disinformation agent for the Central Intelligence Agency. Or perhaps he is speaking truths with provocative tactics to get me to think with ultimate clarity. ** Context: a government employee introduced me to a TV producer to investigate the ‘false claims’ involving the UFO Pentagon videos. My friend still maintains the videos were altered or are fake. Likely for a disinformation program to promote UFO Wars via a Washington Institute / Carnegie Endowment scheme. See Patrick Clawson, Henry Kissinger and the Pilgrims Society. And this: 1917- Carnegie Endowment - Speech for alien threat to unite the world in one government- https://m.imgur.com/gallery/o9ZMHQI https://m.imgur.com/gallery/o9ZMHQI Keep in mind, I was referencing TheDrive suggesting it was for disinformation against China. Might save this comment before it is removed even though I could forward the original emails to hn@ycombinator.com to prove these are authentic. I removed part of my email due to length. ** July 14, 2019 to CIA “Can you comment on these articles? The first describes a plausible explanation for the exaggerated claims. The second makes no sense. Why is Dr. James Sheehy, the CTO of the Naval Aviation Enterprise, defending “super technology” patents of a Naval aerospace engineer? Including patents that reference Hal Puthoff with the assignee of the Secretary of the Navy. Either these guys are idiots or they’re involved in some intelligence operation against China. I don’t care if the government is lying or not about UFOs. I trust the military to not ignore viable threats and thus none of this matters to me. I’d love to know what Gen. McCasland said to you and what Prince Hans-Adams of Liechtenstein thinks about all of this but doubt I’ll ever know that. At least Prince Hans-Adams is a legit billionaire interested in exotic technology research.“ ** July 14, 2019 CIA to darkphoton Hi darkphoton, It is emails like this that cause me to worry about your mental health. If you let yourself get pulled back into reading this crap you will mess up your life. Patent filing is a standard method of the techno scammers because patents are only reviewed for formatting yet schizophrenics think patents are reviewed for scientific basis. The claimed letter of support (which appears fake on many levels) would have no role in a patent review. I generally do not share how government documents can be authenticated, but in this case the lack of a signature block is sufficient. I had warned you not to look for plausible explanations for fabricated stories. Yes, balloons are often used to carry radar reflectors for calibrating and verifying radar performance. Yes, submarines often release balloons with radar reflectors as part of Naval training. Yes, pilots would not be briefed on release or balloons with radar reflectors because they have no role in the radar calibration or performance testing. None of this has anything at all do to with the fake stories and fake videos associated with the techno scammers. Every time you end a sentence with an explanatory clause such as " or they’re involved in some intelligence operation against China" you are on the verge of mental illness. Intelligence operations against China or any other country or organization are so well concealed that you would never encounter even the slightest trace. Watch the film "A Beautiful Mind" to see how schizophrenia messes with your mind into thinking you are seeing some sort of pattern or other link to an intelligence operation. You are examining some Techno Scammers. In the process you will encounters enablers (loons), targets (rich dummies), and fellow conspirators (crooks). You will not encounter intelligence operations. I left <removed> off at your request, but I am holding <removed> responsible to make sure you stick to "crime investigation" with limited hours and effort. You have a great mind for investigation, but you also have a tendency towards paranoid delusions. You have to police yourself. Our friend <removed> (<removed>) also has a tendency towards paranoid delusions, and it has caused him trouble. He loves playing ice hockey. I suggested he monitor his time or performance on the ice. When it decreases, he extracts himself from the loon world for awhile. Find something you love and do the same. V/r, Accipiter
GlenTheMachine 6y ago
There's a lot of conspiracy theory-type stuff on this thread, but the truth is a lot more mundane. Essentially, this is a combination of an org that doesn't do a lot of basic research combined with bureaucracy at work. I'm a DoD scientist. The funding levels listed here are at the low end for an in-house basic research project. The funding levels would support 1-2 scientists half time, including their overhead rates. Once the funding is granted it normally runs for three years without a significant review. They funded it originally because the boards that decide whether to fund these programs are staffed entirely in house by folks who aren't really researchers, and who have an incentive to keep their own people employed. They were "silent" about it because to release any information whatsoever about a program, no matter how mundane, requires at minimum a multi-week review process. You can't just answer a reporter's questions over the phone. And any such review normally requires the researcher to initiate it. So: they had a researcher who was out there, but probably had done interesting work in the past and was a good salesman. He convinced a board of non-scientists to fund him at what the Navy considers a very low level for three years. He didn't produce any publishable work so he didn't have an incentive to talk about it, and the Navy center involved didn't push him to because they have no incentive to do so.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- saberdancer 6y ago
  Exactly. There is no real mystery when you look into it. If there was any real value to these "discoveries" they would be kept secret. Just the fact that the patents were public were enough to know that it's vaporware. The most surprising thing about the whole story is that some higher ups were helping push through these patents, going so far as to claim that the patents are operable [1]. How any one of them couldn't see this for vaporware is beyond me. [1] - "the inventor Salvatore Pais, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division's (NAWCAD) patent attorney Mark O. Glut, and the U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise's Chief Technology Officer Dr. James Sheehy, all assert that these inventions are not only enabled, but operable." - https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-aerospace-tech-boss-claims-key-ufo-patent-is-operable https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-a...
sambull 6y ago
I've always assumed this was a psyops, make people think we had 'alien weapons' while still trying to catch up on the hyper-sonic missile side. Especially with the navy saying they had 'craft' that actually were actively flying with some of his tech.
vzaliva 6y ago
They guy took Navy for a ride. End of story. Chill.
- mtnygard 6y ago
  Seems like it. Reluctance to comment just be people trying to spare their org from embarrassment about being gulled.
woah 6y ago
Seems like a very long article on the Navy spending $500k. Isn't that like, the cost of one missile?
blackrock 6y ago
They should patent the space based solar power station. Yes. They actually got a freaking patent for this. In 1973. 47 years later, I’m still waiting to see it. I guess the 20 year patent rights has now expired. The key thing missing is an actual solar based power station. They should also patent a time machine while they’re at it. Since it’s not like they actually need a real working time machine to secure such a patent.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

96 points by samizdis 6y ago

Here’s the TLDR: > - The High Energy Electromagnetic Field Generator testing occurred from October 2016 through September 2019; > - The cost was $508,000 over the course of three years. Around ninety percent of the total - $462,000 - was for salaries, while the rest was used for equipment, test preparation, testing and assessment. > - When NAWCAD concluded testing in September 2019, the “Pais Effect” could not be proven. > Despite the fact that NAWCAD says the experiments ended in September 2019 without proving the “Pais Effect,” the inventor asserted to The War Zone in a November 18, 2019 email that his work “culminates in the enablement of the Pais Effect” and that “as far as the doubting SMEs [Subject Matter Experts] are concerned, my work shall be proven correct one fine day…” However IMO what's really interesting is when we contrast this announcement of test failure with prior released documents showing that the Chief Technology Officer of the Naval Aviation Enterprise wrote a letter to the US Patent Office pressuring them to overturn a prior rejection of these patents, claiming that the technology is operable and that "China is already investing significantly in this area". Citation: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28729/docs-show-navy-got-ufo-patent-granted-by-warning-of-similar-chinese-tech-advances https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28729/docs-show-navy-g...

keyle 6y ago
That seems like such a low cost. How can a R&D project of this magnitude only cost that much in 3-4 years?
- lallysingh 6y ago
  Mostly folks doing the math and simulations, I'd assume.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  It doesn’t seem that unreasonable, mostly one guy in a lab chasing a theory. If it were any smaller scale the costs would be denominated in beer and garage space. Government salaries aren’t silicon valley salaries.
- simonh 6y ago
  Any equipment used could have been repurposed from past projects, or borrowed from existing ones. If that's the case, it helps explain why they might green light the project even if it has a low expected chance of panning out. Might as well use it for something.
bane 6y ago
Well, the article says "operable" which just means there's a thing that works. But it doesn't say how well.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  It's also possible that they have something operational, whether they build it or came by it, but they don't know how it works and still wanted to patent it.

arkitaip 6y ago

> Despite every physicist we have spoken to over the better part of two years asserting that the "Pais Effect" has no scientific basis in reality and the patents related to it were filled with pseudo-scientific jargon, NAWCAD confirmed they were interested enough in the patents to spend more than a half-million dollars over three years developing experiments and equipment to test Pais' theories. That's such a low sum when it comes to military waste that leadership would have to be crazy not to spend it! /s

wil421 6y ago
> The cost was $508,000 over the course of three years. Around ninety percent of the total - $462,000 - was for salaries, while the rest was used for equipment, test preparation, testing and assessment. Well we know why it was a success for the scientist.
- saberdancer 6y ago
  This probably has no net effect on the budget, people on the project were already on salary. Only loss is that Navy could have used these people on something more productive, but then again, I doubt Navy cares about productivity too much.
tgflynn 6y ago
It's a small amount of money for any physics experiment and absolutely tiny by the standards of government expenditure. I don't have a problem with them having done the experiment, I have a problem with the fact that they prematurely filed a patent and appear to have misrepresented the state of their research to get it approved over the objections of the patent examiners.

sandworm101 6y ago

508,000 cost. 462,00 salaries. That leaves 46,000 for equipment. Over three years that is roughly 15,300/year. Numbers that low in a government might be only office costs, desks, a few computers and maybe a big printer. I think this might make it the cheapest new-physics experiment in recent memory. The goal of this program seems to be to keep this guy on payroll. This guy knows something. It is probably totally unrelated to this "patent" but there is some reason the Navy wanted to keep him in their orbit.

stupidcar 6y ago
Another possibility could be office politics. Perhaps the researcher played golf or whatever with somebody quite senior and convinced them to back his pet project. The senior person's juniors know it's nonsense, but they fund the most bare-bones programme anyway in order to placate them.
lallysingh 6y ago
Or he did some good work in the past and they have him the benefit of the doubt. 462k/3 is 154k/yr. That's 1-2 scientists.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- willis936 6y ago
  Scientists make 80k/yr. For reference: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/scientist-salary-SRCH_KO0,9.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/scientist-salary-SRCH_KO0...
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Yes, that is their salary but that isn't their total "cost". From the navy's budget perspective people cost much more than their actual salary (benefits, admin cost etc). Example. I work in the military. I am paid a salary. But, as a government employee I must take certain online courses (anti-bullying, sexual harassment, workplace safety). These are from another department but are budgeted as if they are from an outside organization. When I take the class, at no cost to me, the fee for that class moves from one pile of money (my unit's training budget) to another (the unit offering the course). Such expenses, even though internal to the larger organization, are budgeted by individual units. They are a cost associated with my employment but are not salary, tax, benefits or anything else employees might see on their paychecks. Such costs are real and must be anticipated whenever you hire people.

temp0826 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout

JackFr 6y ago
This was a key strategy in terms of deceiving my parents as a teenager. Never knew there was a name for it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

darkphoton 6y ago

I risk being shadowbanned again but this is my theory based on experience with CIA scientists. These types of exotic technologies and new physics aren’t possible due to hard physical laws in our reality. The only way to achieve such transformative technology is in reality where the nature of particle physics changed. According to Lawrence Krauss, there is nothing stopping the Higgs field from falling into a lower energy state. This would obviously change the mass of all particles and theoretically create a new cosmic electron. A 4th generation bosonic electron capable of occupying the same quantum wave function. Imagine if actual infinite reality was a 7th realm, and the higher world was a 6-cube with a 4th dimension to spatial reality. If you downprojected this into a 5-cube, you would lose one spatial reality and distort time from one infinite day into 365-days, inverting the arrow of time and inverting our consciousness. The affect of this would be the source of mystery, coincidence, romance but also self-destruction behaviors. All of this is predicated on human awareness and the ability to control emotions and separate yourself from the external world where deception and ignorance are forces of natures. The purpose is this is to provoke conscious thought to remind us that we are downprojected from a 6-cube where actual reality exists. The goal is to write the past in the future, then have the past create the future. This is a function of a cosmic simulation and a natural process for us to change our perception and thus transform the nature of particle physics. We build up the world through knowledge then switch it with understanding (secret of Chabad). It’s very much like the movie Tenet. My original account was notthegov but it is shadowbanned. I explained some of this on ChabadforHackers.com in an effort to get Presidential clemency for Ross Ulbricht and Drew Jones. I’m still working on freeing them via the ODNI and President Biden this year.

zahrc 6y ago
I haven't heard of the Tenet, can you elaborate on that, please?
- dijksterhuis 6y ago
  It's a recent Christopher Nolan movie. I thought it was pretty good. https://chrisnolan.fandom.com/wiki/Tenet https://chrisnolan.fandom.com/wiki/Tenet

credit_guy 6y ago

This might be just a honeypot. The US Navy makes some noise about some stuff that has a slight chance of being possible, the adversary must react, and the reaction is potentially along the lines "how do we infiltrate that part of the organization, what assets do we have that can initiate contact", etc. If the end result is that the US Navy identifies some spies, the cost of half a million is absolutely nothing.

Zigurd 6y ago
The superconductor patent (I have not read the other ones) reads like a science fiction writer's extrapolation from real published papers on room temperature superconductors. If one wanted to create disinformation, to smoke out spies or whatever reason, about US secret capabilities this seems like a plausible approach.
bewaretheirs 6y ago
It also brought to mind this probably-apocryphal story (from Anton Braun Quist, "Excuse me... what was that?" (1982), a collection of engineering tall tales): "Secret Weapons" "The U.S. engineers perspired over their task, rapid development of several identical, extraordinarily complex machines. The work was finished on time, and the machines were flown away to be parachuted into various parts of Germany. It turned out that all the devices were discovered by the Germans." "Then the German engineers perspired, throwing heavy manpower and resources into examination of these new weapons. What were they for? They were designed to occupy a large number of German engineers; that's what. And they did."
rozab 6y ago
I was thinking more along the lines of all the effort the US put into ICBMs, mind control etc. in the cold war because they believed Russia had a huge technological advantage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap

Railsify 6y ago

These programs get approved because the approves are not scientists.

darkphoton 6y ago

My original account now shadowbanned. If you email me at q@illuminati.io I will forward anyone the original headers to this email. This message will be destroyed soon by your overlords at “Hacker News” — so sad that this is Y Combinator in 2021. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=notthegov https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=notthegov ** Here’s an example of the power of your own self reflective thoughts vs taking in external information. In this case, our opponent in this is an alleged disinformation agent for the Central Intelligence Agency. Or perhaps he is speaking truths with provocative tactics to get me to think with ultimate clarity. ** Context: a government employee introduced me to a TV producer to investigate the ‘false claims’ involving the UFO Pentagon videos. My friend still maintains the videos were altered or are fake. Likely for a disinformation program to promote UFO Wars via a Washington Institute / Carnegie Endowment scheme. See Patrick Clawson, Henry Kissinger and the Pilgrims Society. And this: 1917- Carnegie Endowment - Speech for alien threat to unite the world in one government- https://m.imgur.com/gallery/o9ZMHQI https://m.imgur.com/gallery/o9ZMHQI Keep in mind, I was referencing TheDrive suggesting it was for disinformation against China. Might save this comment before it is removed even though I could forward the original emails to hn@ycombinator.com to prove these are authentic. I removed part of my email due to length. ** July 14, 2019 to CIA “Can you comment on these articles? The first describes a plausible explanation for the exaggerated claims. The second makes no sense. Why is Dr. James Sheehy, the CTO of the Naval Aviation Enterprise, defending “super technology” patents of a Naval aerospace engineer? Including patents that reference Hal Puthoff with the assignee of the Secretary of the Navy. Either these guys are idiots or they’re involved in some intelligence operation against China. I don’t care if the government is lying or not about UFOs. I trust the military to not ignore viable threats and thus none of this matters to me. I’d love to know what Gen. McCasland said to you and what Prince Hans-Adams of Liechtenstein thinks about all of this but doubt I’ll ever know that. At least Prince Hans-Adams is a legit billionaire interested in exotic technology research.“ ** July 14, 2019 CIA to darkphoton Hi darkphoton, It is emails like this that cause me to worry about your mental health. If you let yourself get pulled back into reading this crap you will mess up your life. Patent filing is a standard method of the techno scammers because patents are only reviewed for formatting yet schizophrenics think patents are reviewed for scientific basis. The claimed letter of support (which appears fake on many levels) would have no role in a patent review. I generally do not share how government documents can be authenticated, but in this case the lack of a signature block is sufficient. I had warned you not to look for plausible explanations for fabricated stories. Yes, balloons are often used to carry radar reflectors for calibrating and verifying radar performance. Yes, submarines often release balloons with radar reflectors as part of Naval training. Yes, pilots would not be briefed on release or balloons with radar reflectors because they have no role in the radar calibration or performance testing. None of this has anything at all do to with the fake stories and fake videos associated with the techno scammers. Every time you end a sentence with an explanatory clause such as " or they’re involved in some intelligence operation against China" you are on the verge of mental illness. Intelligence operations against China or any other country or organization are so well concealed that you would never encounter even the slightest trace. Watch the film "A Beautiful Mind" to see how schizophrenia messes with your mind into thinking you are seeing some sort of pattern or other link to an intelligence operation. You are examining some Techno Scammers. In the process you will encounters enablers (loons), targets (rich dummies), and fellow conspirators (crooks). You will not encounter intelligence operations. I left <removed> off at your request, but I am holding <removed> responsible to make sure you stick to "crime investigation" with limited hours and effort. You have a great mind for investigation, but you also have a tendency towards paranoid delusions. You have to police yourself. Our friend <removed> (<removed>) also has a tendency towards paranoid delusions, and it has caused him trouble. He loves playing ice hockey. I suggested he monitor his time or performance on the ice. When it decreases, he extracts himself from the loon world for awhile. Find something you love and do the same. V/r, Accipiter

GlenTheMachine 6y ago

There's a lot of conspiracy theory-type stuff on this thread, but the truth is a lot more mundane. Essentially, this is a combination of an org that doesn't do a lot of basic research combined with bureaucracy at work. I'm a DoD scientist. The funding levels listed here are at the low end for an in-house basic research project. The funding levels would support 1-2 scientists half time, including their overhead rates. Once the funding is granted it normally runs for three years without a significant review. They funded it originally because the boards that decide whether to fund these programs are staffed entirely in house by folks who aren't really researchers, and who have an incentive to keep their own people employed. They were "silent" about it because to release any information whatsoever about a program, no matter how mundane, requires at minimum a multi-week review process. You can't just answer a reporter's questions over the phone. And any such review normally requires the researcher to initiate it. So: they had a researcher who was out there, but probably had done interesting work in the past and was a good salesman. He convinced a board of non-scientists to fund him at what the Navy considers a very low level for three years. He didn't produce any publishable work so he didn't have an incentive to talk about it, and the Navy center involved didn't push him to because they have no incentive to do so.

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saberdancer 6y ago
Exactly. There is no real mystery when you look into it. If there was any real value to these "discoveries" they would be kept secret. Just the fact that the patents were public were enough to know that it's vaporware. The most surprising thing about the whole story is that some higher ups were helping push through these patents, going so far as to claim that the patents are operable [1]. How any one of them couldn't see this for vaporware is beyond me. [1] - "the inventor Salvatore Pais, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division's (NAWCAD) patent attorney Mark O. Glut, and the U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise's Chief Technology Officer Dr. James Sheehy, all assert that these inventions are not only enabled, but operable." - https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-aerospace-tech-boss-claims-key-ufo-patent-is-operable https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-a...

sambull 6y ago

I've always assumed this was a psyops, make people think we had 'alien weapons' while still trying to catch up on the hyper-sonic missile side. Especially with the navy saying they had 'craft' that actually were actively flying with some of his tech.

vzaliva 6y ago

They guy took Navy for a ride. End of story. Chill.

mtnygard 6y ago
Seems like it. Reluctance to comment just be people trying to spare their org from embarrassment about being gulled.

woah 6y ago

Seems like a very long article on the Navy spending $500k. Isn't that like, the cost of one missile?

blackrock 6y ago

They should patent the space based solar power station. Yes. They actually got a freaking patent for this. In 1973. 47 years later, I’m still waiting to see it. I guess the 20 year patent rights has now expired. The key thing missing is an actual solar based power station. They should also patent a time machine while they’re at it. Since it’s not like they actually need a real working time machine to secure such a patent.

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