There is an interesting post related to this thead on the Popular Mechanics website dealing with "powerswim":
32. RE: Navy SEALs Could Turn Superhuman with Pentagon's PowerSwim
This really is a fleecing of taxpayer money. Apparently this was funded under white paper solicitation submitted by DEKA to the Defense Sciences Office for Research and Technology. I looked up the program objectives, scope and funding which identifies how contracts are awarded for high-risk/high-payoff research initiatives. It clearly states "proposals for the integration of existing technologies or development of systems will be considered out of scope and will not be evaluated". Rehashing the Aqueon for $2.8 million seems to be in clear violation of the DSO guidelines. I think DEKA duped the DSO. The white paper needed to "clearly state the uniqueness of the idea presented in the context of the existing state of the art in the technical area of interest". Given the product DEKA developed, it would appear they either miserably failed to do what they were contracted to develop, or the proposal was blatant fraud from the beginning. I'm inclined to think it was the later. I want my money back!
Navy SEALs PowerSwim - DARPA Device - Efficient Swimming - Aquaman - Popular Mechanics
Didn't think fraud might have been involved just laziness. Looks like I may have been premature in that conclusion. If you have time, why not send some emails out to the committee members as described above this post?
