UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 06 · SEPTEMBER 18, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D140AAWSAP DIRD, High-Frequency Gravitational Wave Communications, April 2010
Radio signals weaken as they pass through matter and the atmosphere. This April 2010 DIRD, written for the AAWSAP program, asks whether gravitational waves — ripples in spacetime itself — could be used to carry messages instead. The release calls it an exploratory systems review.
What the paper proposes
The author surveys designs for transmitters that would generate high-frequency gravitational waves in a laboratory and detectors that would pick them up, giving most attention to the Li-Baker detector concept. On that basis the paper sketches uses: secure links between two points, precise timing references, and navigation across interplanetary distances.
Everything depends on capabilities nobody had shown, as the release stresses: generating such waves on a lab scale, and detecting them reliably enough to carry a signal.
Some background
The gravitational waves that observatories such as LIGO have since detected come from colliding black holes and neutron stars, are extremely weak and sit at low frequencies. The high-frequency, artificially generated waves this paper relies on are a separate and unproven proposal. Another paper in the series on exotic communication is The Space Communication Implications of Quantum Entanglement and Nonlocality.
The official description
From war.gov/UFO, released September 18, 2026, quoted in full
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 whether high-frequency gravitational waves could serve as a communications medium while avoiding the attenuation that limits radio-frequency systems. The report surveys proposed transmitter and detector concepts, argues that gravitational-wave communications could support secure point-to-point links, timing standards, and interplanetary navigation, and gives particular attention to laboratory generator concepts and the Li-Baker detector as possible building blocks for such a system. The document makes clear, however, that the entire concept depends on capabilities that had not been demonstrated in practice, including laboratory-scale generation and reliable detection of usable high-frequency gravitational-wave signals. It is an exploratory systems-oriented review built around a future communications concept.