3,000 Robots Wanted for Battle! (And iRobot may have the inside track)

The Pentagon has issued an URGENT Request for 3,000 counter-IED robots, including 1,000 more by the end of this year, AP reports. iRobot Corporation (NASDAQ:IRBT) is one of the leading contenders to get a piece of this contract.
(The military already has about 5,000 robots, including 1,000 iRobot PackBot robots, mostly of the bomb-killing variety).

Here is excellent coverage from Wired (Via Defense News), which calls iRobot "the favorite" to win the competition for the contracts to be announced Sept. 14. Here's one comment added to the post:

I work for a small robotics company that received this bid request on July 17. We worked on it for a day or so before realizing that it is totally rigged. I've heard hearsay that iRobot even knew about this competition about a year before this announcement came out. The good-ole-boy network is alive and well in defense contracting, and since we don't have a general in our pocket, we have no chance of winning it.

Hint of a big contract could be one reason behind last week's sudden runup, but an actual contract would be much bigger news, particularly if it came with a "surge" bonus.

The robot surge also made it to Time Magazine, which notes speculation that Foster-Miller may build a scaled-down version of its Talon robot (a must read) and Wonkette.

thx, aj_penny_packer and ibnjoyn_2007!