No other country on earth has a larger defense budget than the United States. According to the Department of Defense, its base budget for fiscal year 2010 is over $500 billion, with another $130 billion to bolster the War on Terrorism and another $33 billion in supplemental spending on top of that. And that’s not to mention Homeland Security or nuclear arsenal maintenance. Especially with the DARPA-Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on rise the budget will only expand but the cost is great even without this agency. What is this money spent on? A lot of this money is spent on aircraft, tanks and ships, all of which are top – of – line and represent the furthest advances in military technology. In other words, they cost a lot of money. How about the future military projects? Have you seen them? Well, we are about to show you one of the latest military projects of the U.S military.The DARPA projects are mostly unknown due to security reasons but here is one of DARPA projects that is known.
So what’s so special about DARPA projects?
Typically when the Pentagon puts out a tender for a new contract, it goes to to established defense contractors. Not so with the new XC2V FlypMode combat vehicle. This time, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) crowd-sourced the project, meaning that it opened up the contract to the general public to design.
The result is the vehicle you see here. Designed by the same Local Motors behind the Rally Fighter, the XC2V – shorthand for Experimental Crowd-derived Combat-support Vehicle – is, for the time being at least, a “proof of principle project,” so we’re not likely to see it go into production any time soon.
Whatever becomes of this impressively capable-looking vehicle, that Local Motors managed to put the whole thing together in just 14 weeks could be the most impressive part of all. Especially considering it would probably take us longer to build a kit car, and those have all the components and instructions ready to go. Follow the jump to watch the time-lapse video of the build from start to finish.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the winner of its Experimental XC2V crowd-sourced combat vehicle competition in May and gave the victor just 14 weeks to build a prototype. In less than the allotted time, winner Local Motors has produced a fully functional version of its FLYPMODE concept.
Built on a common chassis, the beastly vehicle is intended for combat reconnaissance and combat delivery and evacuation. The XC2V competition was an experiment in using private industry to efficiently design and build a new vehicle, and it seems to have been successful. The project was completed ahead of schedule, but even if it had taken the full 14 weeks, DVICE notes that it would have been finished about five times faster than it usually takes a project to go from concept to prototype. DVICE also speculates that it was much cheaper to than the traditional process, although DARPA hasn’t spoken publicly on the cost.
Local Motors’ concept was chosen out of a pool of about 150 designs submitted to DARPA by members of the private sector like universities and small businesses, not the traditional big defense contractors and Department of Defense (DoD) collaborators. The public was allowed to vote and provide feedback on all the submissions, and FLYPMODE was chosen as the overall winner. DARPA calls FLYPMODE the “first crowd-sourced, military-relevant vehicle design,” and it could be indicative of the future that sees private industry playing a greater role in the development of tools to be used in wartime.
We will soon see many more DARPA projects. One of the rumors is one of DARPA projects will be a military robot but we won’t find out until DARPA decides we should know.
What will be the design of this DARPA project?
The best way to understand what it looks like is to actually see it! Check out the pictures below.
