The Congressional Research Service confirms that high-powered microwave weapons can “disable adversary electronics and communications systems” and “generate effects over wider areas than HELs.” The Navy engineer Salvatore Pais filed patents for a “high energy electromagnetic field generator” that uses rotating superconductors to produce intense electromagnetic fields. The DIA’s AAWSAP programme commissioned multiple research reports on UAP propulsion and energy systems. These three threads converge on the same physics.
What HPM Weapons Actually Do
According to the January 2026 CRS report, HPM weapons work by generating concentrated electromagnetic energy in the microwave frequency range and directing it at a target. Effects include disabling electronics, communications systems, and — at sufficient power — biological tissue. The report notes HPM weapons could provide “more effective area defense against missile salvos and swarms of drones” due to their wider beam spread. The fundamental operating principle is generating and directing extremely high-power electromagnetic fields.
The Pais Navy Patents
Between 2016 and 2019, Navy aerospace engineer Salvatore Cezar Pais filed a series of patents through the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division. The patents describe: a hybrid aerospace-underwater craft; a room temperature superconductor; an inertial mass reduction device; and — most relevant here — a “high energy electromagnetic field generator.” The generator patent describes using rapidly rotating superconducting rings to produce electromagnetic fields of extreme intensity. The patent explicitly claims the technology could produce propulsive effects through interaction between the generated field and the quantum vacuum. The Navy defended these patents as technically feasible when challenged by the patent office.
The connection to directed energy is direct: a rotating superconductor generating a high-intensity electromagnetic field is simultaneously a propulsion system and a directed energy emitter. The same physics that would produce the anomalous flight performance documented in UAP cases — instantaneous acceleration, no observable propulsion exhaust, transmedium operation — would also produce strong electromagnetic field effects in the surrounding environment. UAP sensor interference, electronics disruption on intercepting aircraft, and radiation-pattern burns in biological tissue near UAP are all consistent with this mechanism.
AAWSAP: The Government Programme That Connected These Dots
The DIA’s Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Programme (AAWSAP), run from 2008–2012 and based at Bigelow Aerospace, commissioned 38 formal research reports. The topics included: advanced propulsion, warp drives, wormholes, negative energy, and — specifically relevant here — directed energy and its relationship to anomalous aerial phenomena. AAWSAP programme manager Dr. James Lacatski and BAASS investigator Colm Kelleher co-authored a book describing the programme’s scope. Those 38 reports are legally required to be held in National Archives Record Group 615. They have not been publicly released. They represent the US government’s own classified synthesis of the UAP-DEW physics connection.
Sources: CRS Report IF11882, January 2026. Salvatore Pais Navy patent filings 2016–2019. AAWSAP programme documentation. CRS Report R44175, R45098 on specific DEW programmes.