DARPA Needs Your Help! Design A Ground Combat Vehicle.

[Joe Schlesinger] of MakeIt Labs wrote in to let us know about an upcoming live chat session march 28th on IRC to discuss DARPA’s latest project, the Adaptive Vehicle Make.

DARPA, in the pursuit of innovative high-risk high-payoff tactical technology is looking to crowd-source the design and construction of the 3000-5000 parts that make up your run of the mill super advanced next generation military hardware. They are even going to distribute about a thousand 3D printers to schools, where students will compete to design some of the complex systems.  The project emphasizes “not traditional” vendors (IE: Hackerspaces) and monetary compensation will be involved in the parts production process.

If you like acronyms (and who doesn’t), or feel like wading through jargon, check out their site. We also found the Wikipedia entry to be helpful in understanding what they are carrying on about.  A briefing PDF (6mb) also contains a lot of information on DARPA’s plans, and pretty pictures.

As per usual DARPA plans on issuing several challenges to make up the entire project, all with huge cash prizes. The first two challenges last 9 months, starting with the Mobility/Drivetrain Challenge in the middle of 2012.   The Chassis/Integrated Survivability Challenge starts in 2013.  These first two also include a cash prize of  500 thousand to one million dollars. The third challenge, the Total Platform Challenge lasts 15 months and begins in late 2013 this carries a prize of one to two million.

[Joe]’s Hackerspace will be there, any chance we could help out?

63 thoughts on “DARPA Needs Your Help! Design A Ground Combat Vehicle.

  1. This is not about killing people, it’s about revolutionizing the way we build things so that US taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted in the ridiculously expensive processes we currently use to build these things (like ground combat vehicles).

  2. F*ck the US military. They don’t “defend” the country and haven’t done so at least since 1812. They are an instrument of military-industrial-complex imperialism, nothing more.

  3. Yeah, that’s kind of my point. I know people are working on these things but it always looks like it’s from some young upstart that’s trying to squeeze together some money.

    If DARPA stopped blowing money on superfluous research and actually made things beneficial to SASO it would have a much greater positive impact on combat operations than some vehicle that may or may not be used.

  4. @Olivier: your idea sounds familiar. Like there was a world event recently. If you really want to stand behind your words, I advise strapping dynamite to your chest and blowing yourself up outside of the DARPA offices.

    @militant pacifists: the US military does more than kill people. Soldiers happen to be trained in fortification, shelter construction, scavenging, wilderness survival, and first-aid, with entire portions of the military dedicating their entire service to the study of those fields. There is no more well-equipped, well-trained, quickly-deployable disaster relief force than the United States military.

    You really want to send a message? Quit spreading lies about how evil people who enter military service are, and go join volunteer relief efforts in the 3rd world. If the rest of us are lucky, you’ll realize just how inhuman some people can be when you’re butchered by the same people you’re ostensibly providing aid to.

    @Joe Bonasses: “raising their recruiting standards” sounds to me like they’re trying to make it harder for murderers, rapists, psych cases, and people likely to go insane from the pressure from getting into the military. I hardly see how you would consider fewer accepted recruits a bad thing, given you’re in favor of complete disarmament. Also: I find your community efforts deplorable.

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