It is when they are closer to having a commercial product—and are moving beyond the basic research stage, when the government funding dries up—that you begin to see these press releases.
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What research? They haven’t published a single scientific paper. And how can they be close to a commercial product when they haven’t built a prototype, and they are citing the favorite time frame for scammers, 10 years, to have a commercial product? But when you’re a big government contractor looking to bilk taxpayers I suppose it isn’t a scam, it’s business as usual.
why would they publish scientific paper ahead of a patent application, wouldn’t they want to keep a tight lid on things?
Many companies keep a tight lid on their inventions, for fear that the invention will be stolen before they can profit from it. They'll often wait to publish until they can protect their intellectual property, and even then, they will not publish key details of their discovery.
Seeing that this is Lockheed Martin, a reliable established corporation with a long history, and not some Italian with a degree-mill diploma in the philosophy of science who has no lab or obvious source of funding, I think that this is a legitimate deal. I mean, I don't think they are running a scam. The technology, OTOH, may or may not have merit.