1. The assignee is the US Navy. He won't personally profit.
2. Protection is given for the claims, not for the abstract, diagrams or specification. The claims have to describe something relatively concrete or they'll be rejected. You can't obtain patents for titles or elevator pitches.
3. Even if it's granted and you think GE infringes, they might disagree. Welcome to patent litigation, which is super expensive.
4. Even if it's not granted, it might be successfully cited as prior art against GE's application. You won't get royalties on nothing.
5. Patents expire. If you're patenting science fiction, yours might expire decades before it's actually possible.
I have filed a patent on my own time and dime. It is much harder than it looks. ~$50,000 USD and hundreds of hours of work over 5+ years.