DARPA gearing up for heavy-lift drone competition
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has tapped more than 120 organizations to compete for millions of dollars in prize money at a drone competition slated for early next month.
The employment of attack drones and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) drones on overseas battlefields in places like Ukraine and the Middle East have garnered many headlines, but the U.S. military is also keen on unmanned aerial systems that can support logistics and keep service members out of harm’s way.
DARPA’s Lift Challenge is aimed at drastically improving the payload-to-weight ratios for vertical-lift unmanned aerial systems that could carry cargo for troops as well as the commercial sector. Specifically, the agency is looking for UAS that can transport payloads that are four times their own weight and offer innovative approaches to propulsion, power, control, aerodynamics and systems integration.
“If successful, these new designs would revolutionize heavy vertical-lift aviation, advancing the goals of the Department of War’s Drone Dominance initiative and making heavy vertical flight more economical for broader use,” officials wrote in a press release issued Thursday, using the Trump administration’s preferred term for the Department of Defense.
Phillip “Donna” Smith, Lift Challenge program manager, said that the cost per pound, per mile transported for vertical-lift platforms is currently too high, and DARPA wants to “shatter that cost barrier.”
“Today, a highly specialized helicopter has about a one-to-one payload-to-weight ratio — a 1,000-pound aircraft carries 1,000 pounds of payload — and commercial drones are often much worse. As you scale up the size of the drone to carry more weight, the cost just explodes,” he said in a video released by the agency.
“Today’s battlefields are dominated by small drones, but because they don’t scale well, they’re limited to tiny payloads. Breaking this weight barrier will revolutionize military missions, allowing us to supply our warfighters anywhere on Earth at a fraction of the cost,” he added.
By achieving a four-to-one payload-to-weight ratio for vertical-lift UAS, officials will be able to “flip the math,” Smith noted.
“Instead of a massive, expensive vehicle, you can carry the same heavy payload with an aircraft that is a fraction of the size and a fraction of the cost. If we can drastically decrease that cost per pound, per mile metric, we open the floodgates” for the technology’s use by the military and private sector, he said.
In recent decades, DARPA has launched a variety of “challenges” with the aim of spurring innovation, giving competitors opportunities to win monetary prizes for their technologies in fields such as self-driving vehicles or robotics.
This latest challenge focused on vertical-lift drones has garnered widespread interest, according to the agency, with participants from more than 20 countries and teams that include small businesses, entrepreneurs and students.
So far, 124 teams have been selected to participate in the face-off, scheduled to take place Aug. 2-9 at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. The competition will be livestreamed and part of it will be open to the public, according to DARPA.
“During the event week, competitors will fly their drones in a five-nautical-mile circuit course in a head-to-head, live performance trial. Those with the highest payload-to-weight ratios and the most novel designs will win up to $6.5 million in prizes,” officials wrote in a press release.
A full list of the teams gearing up for the contest can be found here.
