DARPA Developing Wing-In-Ground Effect Cargo Seaplane

There's never a "low cost" concern when "DARPA" is involved.

Buying a few more supply ships would be much cheaper.

Very interesting article. Thank you @Tom Novak!

To this untrained eye (seat of the pants?), ground effect is a pretty impressive phenomenon.

This brings to mind a DARPA project called Walrus in the early 2000s to develop a huge airship that could carry 1000 troops. Evidently sanity returned and the project was cancelled after the waste of a fair bit of taxpayer money. Incidentally the USSR had a ground-effect seaplane, the MD-160 nicknamed the Caspian Sea Monster, operational from 1987 until the late 1990s.

I don't get it; this isn't really anything new.
Remember Boeing Pelican?
Or even those Caspian Sea Monster Soviets made in the 70's?

As far as I understood, those projects weren't abandoned due to of technology (such as YB-49 flying wing was abounded because of no fly-by-wire back then). Those projects were abandoned because problem with rough seas.

Finally the west will catch up to the fine soviet engineers. Of the glorious CCP. -totally sarcastic!

But seriously it sounds like a stupid waste of cash. What new is there to investigate?

Great in calm seas, but also within the ground effect - wind waves and rogue waves! No thanks!

Yep, just what we need to spend more fiat money on, another Ekroplan. A Soviet project conceived in the 70's, built, test flown and abandoned after a major fatal event that killed its inventor and chief designer, "Rostislav Alexeyev".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan

The above link is now little more than a narrative of what didn't really happen.

DARPA = 'dreams about reaping peons assets', AKA what DDE so aptly labeled and warned us about,the MIC.

Can't make this merd up, but they sure can mischaracterize it!

But why? Who wants this?