[BJ1]

“Where does the energy come from in this process?
Sure you can reverse the combustion process but that requires energy.
Lots of it. More than you will get out of the fuel you make.”

The navy has been funding the polywell reactor for many years. They also wanted their Littoral Combat ships to use a rail gun, but the rail gun technology was not ready in time. Now this to make jet fuel and diesel at sea. They obviously think there is a power source available for all of that. Exactly what is anyone’s guess.

[Paladin2]

"Despite initial difficulties in spherical electron confinement, at the time of the 2005 research project's termination, Bussard reported a fusion rate of 109 per second running D-D fusion reactions at only 12.5 kV (based on detecting a total of nine neutrons in five tests,[10][11]"

Apparently Fusion.

[BitWielder1]

... They obviously think there is a power source available for all of that. ...

A nuclear powered ship to cook up diesel fuel for all the non-nuclear ships in the fleet?
I'm sure it could be made to work. Will it work well enough?
Is it economical? Is it strategically sound? That I don't know.

[null and void]

[dangerdoc]

It doesn’t make sense, if they have such a power source, it will provide more security making the US energy independent than keeping it secret on Navy vessels.

[Talisker]

The undisclosed but obviously crucial power source is the real point of this story. This is a crypto-announcement of that power source! And we know it’s not portable, or it could be used on planes directly instead of being used to make fuel for planes. So the sucker is big.