I think you greatly overestimate how much DARPA spends on research. I personally work on self driving cars and I would guess DARPA has spent maybe 10 million for the Self Drving Car challenge. Their Humanoid robotics was a much cheaper affair (they only sponsored 4 robots, each a million) wouldn't be more than 5 million, their subT challenge currently going on is even cheaper. It seems like they only fund the prize money now and teams need to fund themselves so 1-2 mill. When I worked with DARPA project managers, they could write a check till around 10,000$ on the spot to buy equipment. Anything more needed to go through the required filing (applying for a tender, getting supervisor approval etc) and each project manager had access to only 1-2 million. They mostly used existing University equipment and used their money to pay salaries for research and technical associates. If DoD gets money it goes to Boeing/Lockheed or insane boon doggles like the 1.7 Trillion F-35 which doesn't show any improvement over the F-22 raptor. Surely if they even spent 1 billion of this insane 1.7 trillion on self driving cars, flying planes, Storr would be quite happy. At least they fund Space X now
I think you greatly overestimate how much DARPA spends on research. I personally work on self driving cars and I would guess DARPA has spent maybe 10 million for the Self Drving Car challenge. Their Humanoid robotics was a much cheaper affair (they only sponsored 4 robots, each a million) wouldn't be more than 5 million, their subT challenge currently going on is even cheaper. It seems like they only fund the prize money now and teams need to fund themselves so 1-2 mill. When I worked with DARPA project managers, they could write a check till around 10,000$ on the spot to buy equipment. Anything more needed to go through the required filing (applying for a tender, getting supervisor approval etc) and each project manager had access to only 1-2 million. They mostly used existing University equipment and used their money to pay salaries for research and technical associates. If DoD gets money it goes to Boeing/Lockheed or insane boon doggles like the 1.7 Trillion F-35 which doesn't show any improvement over the F-22 raptor. Surely if they even spent 1 billion of this insane 1.7 trillion on self driving cars, flying planes, Storr would be quite happy. At least they fund Space X now