DARPA announced Tuesday that the Lift Challenge returns in summer 2028 with the minimum qualifying payload raised from 110 pounds (49.9 kg) to 220 pounds (99.8 kg) and the course stretched from 5 nautical miles (9.3 km) to 10 (18.5 km). The aircraft weight cap stays at 55 pounds (24.9 kg).

Those three numbers turn the old target into the new entry fee. A 55-pound aircraft carrying 220 pounds scores exactly 4:1, which means no qualifying run in 2028 can land below the ratio that the entire 2026 field failed to reach. Seventy-six teams checked in at Dayton last month. Five of them completed a scored run.

DroneXL has followed this competition since DARPA’s special notice in October 2025 and reported the half-prize clause in the rulebook before the first weigh-in, the clause that ended up cutting every podium check in two. DARPA Public Affairs sent the 2028 announcement out Tuesday morning.

DARPA Doubled Both Numbers That Stopped The 4:1 Runs

The 2028 rules keep the 55-pound aircraft cap and change everything around it. The minimum payload goes from 110 pounds to 220. The course doubles from 5 nautical miles to 10, with 8 flown loaded instead of 4. Loaded payload-miles per run therefore quadruple.

That combination lands directly on the constraint that decided the 2026 competition. Lift was never the problem in Dayton. Four teams started runs configured at 4.1:1 or better and none of them finished, with one aircraft going quiet three miles into a five-nautical-mile course on drained packs. DroneXL’s reporting from the competition put the wall in watt-hours per kilogram, not in thrust.

Now the payload doubles and the loaded distance doubles with it. A 2028 competitor has to move twice the iron twice as far on an energy budget still capped by a 55-pound airframe that has to carry its own batteries or fuel. Teams also fly two unloaded nautical miles at the end instead of one, and DARPA’s 2026 rules barred any recharging or refueling after the payload drop.

No Scored Run From Dayton Would Qualify In 2028

Every scored run at the 2026 competition finished under 4:1, and no aircraft could weigh more than 55 pounds. That arithmetic caps the heaviest payload any of those runs could have carried at 211 pounds. The 2028 minimum is 220. All nine scored runs fall short.

AVIDrone, Inc. won Dayton with the Katana, a single-main-rotor helicopter weighing 29.3 pounds (13.3 kg) that carried 112.4 pounds (51 kg) around the course for a 3.84:1 ratio. MTech Operations took second at 3.64:1 and Xtreme Aerial Concepts third at 3.45:1. Because nobody crossed 4:1, DARPA’s rules paid half: $1.25 million, $750,000 and $500,000 instead of double each. DroneXL flagged that clause a week before the first aircraft went on the scale.

For scale outside the competition tent, production heavy-lift aircraft sit at or below 1:1. DroneXL’s look at the DJI FlyCart 100 put that platform at roughly 0.53:1.

DARPA Calls 4:1 Possible After Nobody Officially Reached It

DARPA’s announcement describes the 4:1 ratio as achievable and likely only a starting point. The best officially scored run reached 3.84:1. The highest ratio measured anywhere that week, 9.63:1, came from a DefendTex aircraft that never completed a scored course, and DARPA handed it $500,000 for Most Promising Technology anyway.

Program manager Phillip “Donna” Smith made the same distinction at the awards ceremony. “Even though we didn’t hit it in an official score, we saw the path,” Smith said. DefendTex’s design uses string-based support for individual motors to strip weight out of the hub structure, which is the kind of result DARPA runs these competitions to surface.

Two numbers are missing from Tuesday’s announcement. DARPA did not publish a 2028 target ratio, ending its bullet list by asking what the ratio is and promising more in the coming weeks. It also did not publish a prize purse to replace the $6.5 million advertised for 2026, of which $4 million was actually paid.

Two Years Of Build Time Replaces A Nine-Month Sprint

Teams get roughly two years to build for 2028, against the nine months DLC-1 allowed between DARPA’s October 2025 special notice and the August 2026 flight windows. Participation in the first challenge is not a prerequisite for the second. DARPA also says it wants more collaboration across the competitor community.

The 2026 funnel explains why the calendar moved. DARPA counted 489 applications, 225 teams clearing technical benchmarks, 132 invited, 76 checked in, and 62 cleared through safety. Seventy official runs produced nine scored results from five teams.

One constraint hanging over the 2028 build is not DARPA’s. The FCC added uncrewed aircraft systems and UAS critical components produced in a foreign country to its Covered List on December 22, 2025, and the determination names batteries, battery management systems and motors as critical components. DARPA’s own competitor FAQ acknowledges the notice and says the agency is “investigating how this might impact team designs for this challenge.” The current version of that FAQ still says the same thing.

DroneXL’s Take

I have argued through eight months of Covered List coverage that paying for performance builds better American aircraft and banning the competition does not, and Tuesday’s announcement is DARPA reaching for the same lever twice. An open call, iron plates on a certified scale and $4 million in checks produced a near fourfold jump past anything shipping. That is the cheapest capability the federal government bought in drones all year.

The concession is real, and the 2026 scoreboard is where I would look for it. Five teams out of 76 posted a score. One wrecked its remaining aircraft chasing 6.11:1 on the final day. Doubling the payload and doubling the loaded distance could easily produce a 2028 leaderboard shorter than the 2026 one, and a competition that pays nothing because nobody qualifies teaches the community less than a competition that pays out. DARPA has two years to publish a ratio and a purse that avoid that outcome.

My read on the timing is that DARPA is asking American garage inventors to double their energy budget inside a rule that just narrowed their parts bin. The wall in Dayton was stored energy. The FCC’s December determination put foreign-produced batteries and motors on the Covered List, which is the exact shelf a 55-pound airframe chasing 220 pounds gets built from. DARPA noticed, wrote it into its FAQ, and has not published an answer since. That gap belongs to the FCC and to Congress, not to the teams, and it sits on top of the component supply problem American commercial operators are already living with.

Watch what DARPA posts in the coming weeks. The target ratio and the prize purse are the two numbers that decide whether DLC-2 draws 489 applications again or a fraction of that, and the agency has committed to publishing both. If the ratio lands above 5:1 with the purse held flat, the 2028 field will be smaller and stranger than the 2026 one. That may be exactly what DARPA wants.

Sources: DARPA Lift Challenge, DARPA Lift Challenge results, DARPA competitor rules and FAQs, FCC Public Notice DA 25-1086, DARPA Public Affairs

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.