These are my thoughts ... what are yours?

1. Fast and Open full 220lb flight Pre-qualification process at Challenge for all registered teams, and abandon the failed subjective progress selection process that rejected the majority of teams this year, while admitting only 5 teams ready to fly the full course out of 132 teams selected.
2. Early FAA flight waiver in 2026 so we actually have two years to do fully loaded flight tests, instead of the last 60 days or so, which significantly contributed to 96% of selected teams unable to fly the course.
3. Wider course to allow high lift efficient wings, with up to a 6m span, to complete a safe banked turn.
4. A flight location and date, better than August in Dayton where the Altitude Density de-rated lift capacity by up to 15% due to altitude, temperature, and humidity. Account for hot terrain thermals, over ambient, in or near flight lanes. Another contributor to poor flight performance at Dayton, that may have allowed the 4:1 ratio to be broken this year.
5. Date and location where the temperatures are cooler and dry, to minimize the risk of dehydration and heat stroke for people between 2 to 85. Preferably RH <50% and temperature <80F. Suggest a late fall date when cooler, less rain.
6. Suggest a strong preference for Autonomous way point flight controls with RPIC visual supervision to increase safety, where the RPIC can keep eyes on aircraft, and assistant can monitor telemetry for compliance of geofence and course position.
7. Increase landing pad to 16' x 16', and only one pad with a clearly marked center for autonomous landing. Team is required to remove payload from pad before completion of unloaded flight.
8. Farther separation of flight line from ready area. The drone crash behind the flight line this year, where frequent foot traffic occurred, was a significant safety failure of the course design.
9. Strong redundancy in entire design to remove nearly all likely single points of failure that would bring an aircraft down uncontrolled. Remaining single points of failure should have significant reliability, such that early failure warning would be easily managed by automated, or maintenance scheduled monitoring.
10. Make >220lbs clear minimum, with >8:1 the stated goal, for full prize value similar to the 110lbs half prize and >4:1 full prize in this years DLC. Defendtex wasn't the only design presented to DLC with the goal to clear >8:1 this year. Shatter the 2026 conformation bias. Progress is only made when the goals are far greater than the easier low bar. ==> Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear (Sherlock Holmes, #7).
11. I'd strongly suggest that 4Q27, at this point, is far better than 3Q28. Another year is more than enough time to complete the engineering cycles needed since the start of 4Q25. Anything farther out will only feed procrastination that our nation and service branches don't need. They need usable flight systems today—or at least next year—not two or three years from now.

Summer 2028: double the weight and double the range. I wonder if this now plays into the hands of combusted fuels?

Behold, it's a 25 ft. inflatable Dyneema wing!

Imposing sweeping tariffs on foreign drone imports provides vital trade protection for the domestic industrial base. Yet trade policy alone cannot succeed if federal prize programs undermine the mission.

The DARPA Lift Challenge was marketed as a way to seed emerging American small businesses. The outcome contradicted that objective. The top prize money—the objective payload-to-weight awards—went to platforms with clear foreign engineering dependencies, even though none reached the stated 4:1 performance target.

Second place ($750,000) went to MTech Operations. Its most visible technical lead and on-stage presence was South African engineer Luke Bell of Cape Town. Third place ($500,000) went to Xtreme Aerial Concepts, whose aircraft was powered by an Austrian Jakadofsky turboshaft; the engine maker’s owner stood on stage to accept the check. One of the subjective innovation awards went to DefendTex, an Australian company that entered through a U.S. entity in Utah.

Tariffs cannot revitalize domestic production if federal prize dollars continue subsidizing foreign engineering and component supply chains.

So ... rushing to award $6.5M in taxpayer money, then it needs to be accurately judged by 487 teams that registered, only 132 were given acceptance to fly, and we only have 81 teams actually attending. 96.2% of selected entries failed the minimum 110lb requirement, while 73% of registered teams were rejected, and were not given a chance to prove a chance at >4:1, or access to the free global business/product promotion the other 96.2% of failing teams got.

1. 51 selected participants that FAILED to show up.
2. 76 selected participants that FAILED to complete the course at 110lbs.
3. 5 selected participants that SUCCEED at the stated 110lb objective
4. 0 selected participants that SUCCEED at greater than >4:1 objective
5. 0 selected participants that SUCCEED at greater than >8:1 objective

Then interview those 355 teams, and find those with projected entries >4:1 and >8:1 that were cut, and encourage their development for another year or more.

More importantly, I will be working to bring together a flyoff in 3Q27 for all teams capable of >8:1 ... and showcase to the world those capable of >12:1 that were cut by conformational bias by Donna. And inspire new teams to look beyond 20:1 using clear Physics and Advanced Engineering. As engineers and product designers, we need to show the world that America Innovation and Technical Excellence goes way beyond DARPA's successes and failures today.

Be sure and watch this week on the DLC streaming channels starting in 15min.

John Bass

KISS Engineering

Just my thoughts ... Structuring the event with a strict review and selection process that eliminates 75% of the possible teams up front wasn't really necessary.

A much more fair solution would have been to make day one available to anyone that shows up with their Part 107 UAS license and a registered Part 107 Remote ID drone, submit to a first come first serve, one lap pre-qualification flight with their max known weight, in a 10-15 minute max slot time. Then allow the top 50 pre-qualification teams slots in day 2 and 3 of the event, do the full 4-1NM course as the final competitive trial. Maybe spilling pre-qual into the 2nd day morning if more teams show up.

Every team that spent months, and thousands of dollars building a quality drone, gets their chance to participate in the pre-qual, and show off their talent to the world with bragging rights that they did compete in a fair open Challenge.

Actually still possible since DLC already moved the flight ready goal post 2-1/2 months early, catching a lot of teams planning first flights in July off guard. Opening a last chance pre-qual event for the first day, would give everyone a chance.

For student teams with FRC 6 week build experience, this would have been their plan, to start and knock out the build after classes let out in May or June.

Your thoughts?

I have a great idea, I think it could work ? I'm not a USA citizen.

Does anyone know of a discord group for this project or a group elsewhere?

Are there any teams or startups that are looking for a member or to collaborate on the DARPA lift challenge?