All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
After years of sitting through endless PowerPoint briefings on ideas for military weaponry that never got off the drawing board, I've decided it's time to document some of these schemes. So, we here in the DANGER ROOM are issuing the equivalent of a broad agency announcement for the most outrageous, great, funny or otherwise ludicrous examples of VuGraph Engineering, i.e. the world of briefing slides, where physics, engineering and cost are of little or no consequence. Think of it as the military equivalent of the Vaporware Awards.
These ideas need not have been funded. They need not have ever gotten further than a briefing room. Heck, they don't even need to have gotten* into* the briefing room. They can be individual concepts, company-sponsored designs, or Pentagon-generated ideas. Historical examples are also welcome.
These don't even need to be your designs, you just have to be the one who sends them in to us (though the artists out there can even design their own). Entries can range from a full slide presentation down to a single piece of concept art. Naturally, Quad Charts will also be accepted.
The ideas don't necessarily have to be bad or stupid weapons or hardware -- we'll take great ideas. The only requirement is that they must be embodied in some sort of conceptual presentation or briefing slide, i.e. pictures or presentations of real hardware is not accepted. Don't think the deck is stacked for DARPA, either. We just know that the military services and private companies have some wonderful wacky ideas, too.
By way of guidance, I'll provide a few of my personal favorite examples: there's the Marine Space Plane, Brilliant Pebbles II (I bet some of you forget there was a Brilliant Pebbles I), and then, of course, my all time favorite and subject of my book, the isomer bomb. There's also spoofs, like directed energy dolphins.
Entries will be judged based on originality of thought; complexity of design; and projected outrageousness of cost to build. In true homage to VuGraph Engineering, the actual feasibility of the concept need not be a factor, nor will actual military utility.
E-mail your entries by May 21 to: drcontest2007@gmail.com, or if you wish to nominate something available on the Web, you can also leave a comment below with the appropriate link.
Anonymous entries are perfectly welcome, and we'll figure out a way, if the anonymous entrant wishes, to work out a prize drop-off (think dead drop). A committee made up of DANGER ROOM contributors will judge the entries, and in the case of multiple individuals submitting the exact same briefing, we'll go by who submits it first.
Along with the glory of recognition, first prize, by the way, will be a desk model of an F-22: a reminder that VuGraph Engineering, with some persistence, really can become a multi-billion dollar weapons program.
