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I'm very surprised DARPA, ONR, or SOCOM didn't at least offer a startup grant for this. ONR has an entire office devoted to developing stuff exactly like this.

I'm very surprised DARPA, ONR, or SOCOM didn't at least offer a startup grant for this. ONR has an entire office devoted to developing stuff exactly like this. There is an art to writing DoD research grant proposals, just as there is (I presume) an art to pitching VC. So maybe a lack of understanding of how to go about securing these types of grants could explain him not getting one. But DARPA, in particular, goes way out of its way to take that out of the equation. Which leads me to wonder whether there isn't more to this story.

freedomben 8y ago
It's possible that safety and/or energy consumption is the issue. As noted by others, there are similar products like jumping stilts out there. While they are effective, it is very easy to get hurt on them. Falling from that height is very risky. One Amazon reviewer broke a wrist for example. It also sounds like it takes a tremendous amount of energy to use these. One guy was hoping to replace his bicycle with these but discovered that despite being in tremendous shape he couldn't handle more than 15 minutes. Having been in combat situations, the safety factor and energy depletion factor would be a serious problem for military use, especially while wearing body armor and/or carrying a pack.