"With the electric propulsion inflection point for aviation revealed exclusively here at Electronic Design, and given DARPA has half of that 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd prize money left over, I say it's time for a DARPA Electric Lift Challenge in 2027, with no fuels allowed as onboard energy sources and double the course legs to 2,200 ft. Make it Lambda >5 to collect the full prize money to push the helis' tech harder and do Dayton in September to ease up a bit on the toll on both machines and humans." — Andy Turudic, Electronic Design, August 18, 2026

I've been living and breathing the DARPA Lift Challenge after hours for the past eight months, designing my own entry for the challenge. For the past four weeks, I’ve covered the challenge as a technology editor, with occasional, inadvertent commission of journalism. The past couple of weeks have been the post-game wrap-up, with my most recent blog doing a cursory review of the top Lift Challenge prize winners.

I've also worked fairly diligently to get a Zoom call going with DARPA, wanting to do a sorely lacking engineering and project management discussion of The Challenge, requesting Phillip Smith, Lift Challenge Program Manager, and his right-hand man on the tech side, Ed Marin. Both are very busy people and our corner of the journalism world isn't a regular stop for them.

Nonetheless, I managed to negotiate a 45-minute meeting, did a Zoom call with the two of them last week, and we've now turned it into a rather lively and entertaining podcast that I think you'll enjoy listening on your commute, break, or at the gym. I actually ate up an hour out of their calendars and had to cut THEM off. We were all in a groove, in our element as pilots and aviation/tech enthusiasts.

In that call, I was congratulated about "getting it," about how The Challenge exposed the inflection point for aviation where emerging battery tech was responsible for providing the propulsion energy for the first- and second-place Challenge prize winners, with the architectures being helicopter and drone, respectively. Third and fourth place were taken by turbine-powered helicopters, both using the same advanced 23-hp turboshaft engine.

In my most recent blog, as quoted above, I threw down the gauntlet for an electric-only propulsion, or worst case, fuel-electric hybrids, challenge follow-on.

An interesting aspect of our discussion (spoiler alert) was that while electrics kicked proverbial "donkey" in The Challenge, the crossover of propulsion superiority really depended on mission profile. Here, it was inarguable that consumed fuels mean lighter air vehicles, which means reduced energy consumption as the mission clock ticked. But, for the Lift Challenge, I was smug that given a second round, electrics would prevail.

Announcing Lift Challenge 2.0

Though I challenged The Challenge organizers with the notion of funds being available, how we could do better lift ratios with more time, and deliver more advanced technology with a bit more time, I think my comment about doubling the course length to 2,200 feet bit all of us. Sorry — I was THAT guy. DARPA, today, has announced DARPA Lift Challenge 2.0 (DLC-2) and it's even more crazy than the one that just wrapped up.

DLC-2 does, nonetheless, have me intrigued, even though it throws out the bird I designed and optimized for what will forever now be known as DARPA Lift Challenge 1.0 (DLC-1). There's a part of the now-podcast discussion last week, where I pushed us into a non-publicly disclosable area. We all decided to just let the conversation flow keep going as long as the contents weren't released until today. I'm not going to go into those, you'll need to listen to them in the podcast so you hear it from DARPA vs me here in a blog.

The podcast is the soundtrack to a video we're working on that should be ready in a few days, one that I’ve carefully curated to fit the podcast soundtrack and that my partner in crime, Marie, will finesse to Academy Award perfection. This wasn’t a brilliant idea on my part, but the consequence of someone changing the settings on our corporate Zoom account where individual speaker channels were consolidated into one, monolithic sound and video track.

DARPA Lift Challenge 2 (DLC-2) Official Details

What do we "officially" know about DLC-2? Here's what DARPA sent me, and realize that it’s somewhat fluid and subject to change:

"Taking place in the summer of 2028, DLC-2 aims to keep pushing the extreme limits of vertical lift aviation. 

Teams competing in the first DARPA Lift Challenge (DLC-1) showed us that the potential for massive breakthroughs in this field is far greater than we initially anticipated. The 4:1 payload-to-weight ratio is possible and likely just the beginning. 

What to expect in 2028

1. Aircraft will continue to [weigh less than 55 lbs.]
2. Minimum payload is 220 lbs., not 110 lbs.
3. A new course design will double in length to 10 nautical miles (8 loaded, 2 unloaded).
4. Extending the preparation timeline to 2 years to allow for more development and testing.
5. Focus on collaboration amongst this community.
6. Participation in DLC-1 is not a prerequisite for DLC-2.

So, what is the ratio?   We hope you’ll continue this journey with us and look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks.  Stay informed by visiting DARPA.mil/lift." — DARPA 9/1/26

My Analysis/Comments

1. Not a problem if you ignore number 2.

2. Not a problem if you ignore number 1.

3. Me and my big mouth. In my last blog, I suggested double the lane length to 2,200 so we could go full NASCAR in the straights vs. DLC-1's drag strip of 1100 ft. Instead, the crazies at DARPA have doubled the total mission to 10 nautical miles, from DLC-1's 5 nm. This was after we just demonstrated in Dayton, about three weeks ago, that only FIVE of 400-something design entries could complete the course, and that followed the altitude being dropped from 250-ft. AGL to 150-ft AGL. All of this while using the most energy dense batteries and turboshafts available, and with all “winners” quite literally failing to hit the 4.0 payload to unladen aircraft weight ratio.

4. I like that they’ve given us more time. Two years is great, but DLC-2 requires unobtanium to be able to complete that course with a less than 55-lb. sUAS and the effort to create it may run on a fusion-power timeline.

5. The collaboration idea is great, so perhaps this means having a non-public forum in place where challengers can brainstorm and solve problems on the forum as needed. Or we could all organize, crowdfund, and share the required atom-smasher needed to manufacture the unobtanium needed to complete 10 nautical miles (by the way, that’s 11.5 normal-people miles) while carrying over 220 lb.

6. A challenger having done DLC-1 isn’t really much of an advantage or liability, given that the DLC-2 problem set is crazy different — 10 miles carrying a Sumo wrestler vs. a svelte blonde. Burn that image in, DARPA; share our two years of incessant engineering nightmares.

All kidding aside, I think it's fantastic that the DARPA team has obtained approval for doing a DARPA Lift Challenge 2.0 in 2028. I have some car projects already teed up, but this one appeals to me as a wingnut and fits in nicely with my roadmap of building a ground-effect eMotorcycle.

Realize that it's early days and these requirements and rules are subject to change. It'll be interesting to see where these all land for DLC-2 after DARPA have taken their meds...

10 nautical miles carrying 100 kg.

Ugh!

-andyT