What if, and bare with me here, there's some super exotic technologies that we've been working on for a long time and we're this close to making it work and are concerned that the Chinese, notorious patent trolls, will get there first - and then as a preemptive strategy the Navy files these but intentionally obscures the relevant (almost real) physics?

Of course the question then becomes: why even mention this stuff at all? It's not the the Military would really care about a patent in that sense.

I don't believe it either, but The X-Files fan in me can't help but wonder.