Part 4 of 4 Parts (Please read Parts 1, 2 and 3 first)
     The story in the September 2018 issue of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine about LENR research goes on to list several other potentially revolutionary applications for LENR energy sources – if they are ever developed:
     “Other options abound. LENRs could power and provide operational flexibility for undersea surveillance and could provide increased capability for acoustic tomography. Towed sonar systems could cut their tethers, becoming power-independent of their host ships, able to operate at greater distances to prosecute contacts. Logistics and resupply change dramatically when refueling becomes almost an afterthought.”
     “In Near-Earth orbit, applications could include onboard power, space propulsion, and sustained orbital repositioning capability. Space propulsion thrust requires reaction mass, but a LENR-based system could produce extended thrust at high efficiencies by separating the energy source from the propellant mass.”
     The article was attributed to an employee of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). He said, “failure to thoroughly evaluate and develop LENR and its by-products risks missing a window of opportunity for establishing an early foothold and first-mover advantage in a disruptive technology with direct value to the Navy, as well as military, strategic and geopolitical implications. Radical innovations invariably fall outside existing development efforts. Their unfamiliarity can cause strong, sustained, systemic pushback. The Navy has encountered this pushback on many occasions: when steam displaced sail, when coal gave way to oil, and oil to diesel electric; when wooden ships gave way to ironclads, battleships gave way to aircraft carriers, and when conventional forms of propulsion yielded to nuclear.”
     The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) reviewed the literature on LENR in 2006 and reviewed more recent research in 2016. The Agency said, “there are indications that the field of LENR is slowly gaining acceptance,” and that “both SPAWAR HQ and SSC-Pacific say that the phenomenon is real and that it is nuclear in nature.”
     The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD R&E) recommended in 2016 that the Secretary of Defense hold a briefing on the “military utility of recent U.S. industrial base LENR advancements to the House Committee on Armed Services.”
     The wording in the 2018 Proceedings article echoes a statement given in 2017 by Admiral John Richardson who was the Chief of Naval Operations at the time. He said, “My sense is that we’re on the dawn of something very substantial in terms of naval warfare. Something as substantial as the transition from sail to steam, as the transition from wood to ironclad, as substantial as the advent of nuclear propulsion in terms of what it means for naval power.”
     The Proceedings report concluded that “additional research is needed to determine the mechanism by which low energy nuclear reactions occur.” The main purpose of the DTRA is to counter and deter the proliferation or mishandling of weapons of mass destruction. A big part of their work is to “anticipate and understand future threat networks” and “understand basic revolutionary sciences and battlespace changing technologies.” It is obvious why such a potentially game-changing technology as LENR would come under their mission given that the Navy, DTRA and DIA describe it as being revolutionary.
      NSWC-IH intends to publish their initial results on their LENR experiments and reviews of other research by the end of 2021.