The Sheehy “operability” attestation (FOIA docs)
The War Zone / J. Sheehy
Summary and citation · read the original at the source
In one page
When a US patent examiner rejected the Navy's room-temperature superconductor application for lack of utility, the Navy did something unusual. Dr James Sheehy, Chief Technology Officer of the Naval Aviation Enterprise, wrote to the examiner himself and formally declared the invention operable and enabled via the physics described in the patent application — signing that statement in the knowledge that a false one carries a fine or a prison term. Brett Tingley then obtained the surrounding correspondence for The War Zone under freedom-of-information requests, and the emails fill in the rest. Salvatore Pais's four inventions went through technical and marketing reviews from late 2015 and repeated evaluation by the NAWCAD Invention Evaluation Board. A research and technology-transfer project was funded after filing, and Sheehy told the patent office that Pais was already a year into building a test article. One official's line is the whole story in a sentence: now to build a small demo to put the theory into a demo.
Why it matters hereChapter 7 files these as documents rather than data, and this sheet shows why that distinction is worth keeping: a senior Navy technologist put his name to operability under penalty of perjury, and the paperwork around him describes a funded internal programme — while the demonstration itself has never been published, which is precisely what chapter 1 asks a reader to notice.
What it claims
01Dr James Sheehy, Chief Technology Officer of the Naval Aviation Enterprise, wrote to the US Patent and Trademark Office to declare that the room-temperature superconductor invention is operable and enabled via the physics described in the patent application.The War Zone 29232, quoting the Sheehy declaration
Settled physics02Sheehy told the examiner he is well versed in the generation of electromagnetic fields, high temperature superconductivity and physics in general, and made the declaration in the knowledge that false statements to the patent office are punishable by fine or imprisonment.The War Zone 29232
Settled physics03The declaration was filed specifically to overcome the examiner's rejection of the application on the grounds of lack of utility and operability — an official response to a formal objection, not an unsolicited claim.The War Zone 29232
Settled physics04Sheehy also told the patent office that Pais was currently funded by NAWCAD to design a test article and instrumentation to demonstrate the experimental feasibility of achieving high electromagnetic field-energy and flux values, that he was one year into the project, and that he had already begun a series of experiments to design and demonstrate advanced high energy density and high power propulsion systems.The War Zone 37134, quoting the FOIA-released correspondence
Settled physics05The released emails show the inventions went through technical and marketing reviews in late 2015 and evaluation before the NAWCAD Invention Evaluation Board across 2016 and 2017, with the Technology Transfer Office at Patuxent River reviewing them before filing began in April 2016 — four inventions in all, including the craft using an inertial mass reduction device and the high frequency gravitational wave generator.The War Zone 37134
Settled physics06A Section 219 Basic Applied Research and Technology Transfer project was funded after the applications went in, with one Naval Aviation Enterprise official writing that the next step was to build a small demo to put the theory into a demo — and it is the absence of any published result from that demonstration that keeps the effect on the watch list rather than in the record.The War Zone 37134, Section 219 BAR/TT correspondence
What to watch
The way in
https://www.twz.com/37134/emails-show-navys-ufo-patents-went-through-significant-internal-review-resulted-in-a-demoReporting by Brett Tingley for The War Zone, built on Naval Air Systems Command correspondence released under the Freedom of Information Act; the underlying declaration is a US Patent and Trademark Office filing. The site carries the summary and the citations.
How to cite it
The War Zone / J. Sheehy (2020) The Sheehy “operability” attestation (FOIA docs). https://www.twz.com/37134/emails-show-navys-ufo-patents-went-through-significant-internal-review-resulted-in-a-demo
Where it sits in the curriculum
The Pais effectGravity control and superconductorsThe evidence ladder