The Victors

DARPA, which does all the special research projects for the DoD (I'm not calling it the DoW even if they did forcibly change my phrasing in my thesis when they published it, not that I'm mad about that), is hosting a cash prize event at the USAF Museum this past week. I thought the prize pool was over $6 mil total, but I was also told the first prize was something north of 1 million, so unsure on how it works.

But within certain parameters, they want people to build UAVs that are of a certain weight and I believe made from commercially available parts, that can carry a given weight a certain distance, set it down gently, and fly off. I want to say it's something like a 55 lb drone carrying 110 pounds at least 4 miles, then flying another mile?

Anyway, I met up with one of the DARPA attorneys who is here for it at lunch yesterday, as he is also going to be the Reservist who fills in for me when I'm on leave. One of his major roles being out here is working with the judges to adjudicate complaints and protests on rules violations. Since there's so much money at stake, people aren't just being picky so they can win, they're also doing it so they can win a lot of money. So I envision him being like the rules guy in NY when the NFL has to call back for a review, which I thought sounded fun in the abstract, until he pointed out that whoever doesn't get what they want is liable to sue given the amounts at stake, and yeah, I guess having a bunch of people pissed off at you and threatening litigation makes it a wee bit more stressful.

I was going to head down to check it out, but I was also told they were expecting thousands and tens of thousands of people; literally there are a huge swatch of tents and campers there. And you probably can't see very much since they're small UAVs flying over large distances so, yeah, this just sounds like a shit show, from our perspective.

Conceptually, though, it's interesting, just not something I need to deal with.