SlashNOT

Matthew writes: “We have a winner!” announced DARPA officials. “For the first time in a military project, the tax payers have not borne the cost for a failed weapons system development program. Rather, we’ve offloaded those massive losses onto civilian contestants whose ability to project costs and deliver projects appears to be about equal to major defense contractors. Except this time, we didn’t have to pay for it. We got a lot of research and development failures for free, and the American tax payer won big time.”

Flush with the financial success of the failed DARPA grand challenge, the U.S. Government is announcing changes to many of its procurement programs. First out of the gate is a million dollar prize for the first civilian team that develops a completely robotic heavy bomber capable of delivering 100,000 pounds of ordinance to a specific GPS coordinate and returning to and landing on an aircraft carrier without human assistance. DARPA is also considering a program to reward the first religious cult to develop a cloned super-soldier, but has not yet completed the specifications for that challenge.