Who in the US military would be interested in some kind of wacky hover-car plan?
DARPA projects need to be at least nominally aimed at fulfilling a military task for one of the US armed forces, and in this case the hook on which TX is hung is the US Marines’ recent concept of “Enhanced Company Operations” or ECO. The Marines are much more broadminded about wacky hover aircraft concepts than the other US services – they have been a major force in the development of jumpjets like the Harrier and the F-35B, and are the primary users of the amazing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor – so they’re probably a good fit for this. The idea of ECO is, put simply, to let rifle companies* operate more independently by giving them more of the tools normally found attached to larger formations like battalions and above. This can make a lot of sense in modern wars where a company commander and his people may find themselves far from their battalion/battlegroup HQ and its specialist supporting units, yet responsible for a big area. Previous ECO initiatives have given US Marine company commander
