DARPA wants your help to monitor the Arctic Circle
The Arctic Circle is a lot busier than it used to be, a state of affairs that's keeping DARPA awake at night. America's mad science division doesn't like not knowing what's going on up there, and so is asking the public for help. The agency has asked for the science and business community to dream up a cheap and easy to maintain Arctic warning system that'll spot threats on land, in the sky and, crucially, below the ice.
DARPA isn't that interested in just winterizing some of its existing drone tech, and so is asking users to come up with entirely new inventions. Unfortunately, in order to get up to $750,000 to test the idea, the technology has to be both environmentally friendly and run for a minimum of 30 days between refueling stops. The deadline for responses is April 14th, although we imagine we won't learn who has won for a few years yet. Just be warned: if you're writing a screenplay about undetected submarines attacking Canada via the Arctic Circle, you've only got a few years before it becomes implausible.
