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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 29 March 2010 and prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office, is one of a series of FY 2009 advanced technology reports under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. It uses a metric tensor approach from general relativity to catalog the physical effects of engineering spacetime. It covers time alteration, light speed, effective mass, and warp drives. It concludes that these effects are consistent with physics, but that engineering them remains a daunting constraint.
From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 3/29/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD examines the idea of vacuum or spacetime-metric engineering: the possibility that an unspecified future technology might alter the structure of spacetime in ways useful for propulsion, power generation, or extremely rapid long-distance travel. Using general relativity as a model-independent framework, it explores the physical effects that would theoretically follow if such metric changes could be artificially induced, including altered time rates, changes in effective mass, modified light propagation, gravity-like effects, and warp-drive propulsion. The document does not propose any mechanism for generating these effects and treats these physical consequences as an assumed result of spacetime manipulation rather than as the outcome of a practical engineering pathway. It also emphasizes that the energy requirements predicted by current theory to create such effects are far beyond existing technological capability.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /P91t 9Ffl@IAL l:ISIE 8HLY relative to the reference frame of background space, energy bonds of materials strengthened (that is, hardened) relative to the background environment, a decrease in effective mass vis-a-vis the environment, an accelerated timeframe that would permit rapid trajectory changes relative to the background rest frame without undue internal stress, and the generation of gravity-l ike forces of arbitrary geometry - all on the basis of restructuring the vacuum spacetime variables. As avant garde as such features appear to be, they are totally in conformance with the principles of general relativity as currently understood. A remaining challenge is to develop insight into the technological designs by which such vacuum restructuring can be generated on the scale required to implement the necessary spacetime modifications. Despite the challenges, sample calculations as presented herein indicate the direction of potentially useful trends derivable on the basis of the application of GR principles as embodied in a metric eng ineering approach, with the results constrained only by what is achievable practically in an engineering sense. The latter is, however, a daunting constraint. At this point in the consideration of such nascent concepts, given our present level of technological evolution, it is premature to even guess about an optimum strategy, let alone attempt to form a critical path for the engineering development of such technologies . Nonetheless, only through rigorous inquiry into such concepts can one hope to arrive at a proper assessment of the possibilities inherent in the evolution of advanced spaceflight technologies. 1 See, for examp le, a series of essays in the compendium Frontiers of Propulsion Science, Eds. M. G. Mill is and E. W. Davis, AIAA Press, Reston, Virginia (2009). 2 M. Alcubierre, "The warp drive: Hyper-fast travel within general relativity, " Class. Quantum Grav. 11, p. L73 (1994) . 3 H. E. Puthoff, "SETI, the velocity-of-light limitation, and the Alcubierre warp drive : An integrating overview," Physics Essays 9, p. 156 (1996). 4 M. S. Morris and K. 5. Thorne, "Wormholes in spacetime and their use for interstellar travel: A tool for teaching general relativity," Am . J. Phys. 56, pp. 395-412 (1988). 5 M. Visser, Lorentzian Wormholes: From Einstein to Hawking, AIP Press, New York, 1995. 6 M. 5. Morris, K. 5. Thorne and U. Yurtsever, "Wormholes, time machines, and the weak energy condition," Phys . Rev . Lett. 61, p. 1446 (1988) . 7 T. D. Lee, Particle Physics and Introduction to Field Theory, Harwood Academic Press, London (1988). 8 The Philosophy of Vacuum, Eds. S. Saunders and H. R. Brown, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1991). 9 F. Wilczek, The Lightness of Being : Mass, Ether and the Unification of Forces, Basic Books, New York (2008) . 10 A. Logunov and M. Mestvirishvili, The Relativistic Theory of Gravitation, Mir Publ., Moscow (1989), p. 76 . 11 Op . cit., p. 83. 12 5 . M. Mahajan, A. Qadir and P. M. Valanju, " Reintroducing the concept of 'force' into relativity theory," II Nuovo Cimento 65B, 404 (1981). 13 R. Klauber, "Physical components, coordinate components, and the speed of light," www.arXiv :gr-qc/0105071 vl (18 May 2001) . 14 F. de Felice, " On the gravitational field acting as an optical medium, " Gen. Rel. and Grav. 2, 347 (1971). 15 K. K. Nandi and A. Islam, "On the optical-mechanical analogy in general relativity," Am. J. Phys. 63, 251 (1995). 16 H. E. Puthoff, " Polarizable-vacuum (PV) approach to general relativity, " Found . Phys . 32, 927 (2002) . 17 P. Boonserm et al., "Effective refractive index tensor for weak-field gravity," Class. Quant. Grav. 22, 1905 (2005). 18 X.-H. Ye and Q. Lin, " A simple optical analysis of gravitational lensing," J . Modern Optics 55, no. 7, 1119 (2008) . 19 H. E. Puthoff, E. W. Davis and C. Maccone, "Levi-Civita effect in the polarizab le vacuum (PV) representation of general relativity," Gen . Relativ . Grav . 37, 483 (2005) . 20 A. P. Lightman and D. P. Lee, "Restricted proof that the weak equivalence principle implies the Einstein equivalence principle," Phys. Rev. D 8, 364 (1973). 21 C. W. Misner, K. 5. Thorne and J. A. Wheeler, Gravitation, Freeman, San Francisco (1973), p. 5. 22 E.W. Davis, " Chapter 15: Faster-than-Light Approaches in Genera l Relativity," Frontiers of Propulsion Science, Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics Series, Vol. 227 , eds. M. G. Millis and E. W. Davis, AIAA Press, Reston, VA, pp. 473 (2009). UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOA OFFICiI.\k Wliliii O,.k¥ 12
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 17 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.