AWE R&D experienced and early boom around 2010. Hundreds of millions poured into hastily formed ventures, typically with zero aerospace backgrounds, not at all realizing traditional technical challenges of aviation industry. Investors knew just as little. Warnings went unheeded.

Dozens of AWE starts aimed at the same "remote small scale energy market." They did not share R&D closely, nor think much about competition and unproven capabilities. A few ventures went big, with tremendous budgets from players like Google and SABIC. It was an "energy drone" race--first a sprint, then a marathon, then a death march.

AWE fundamentals were stable; the upper-wind resource solid, the clean-energy need persistent, and the technology improving, but not fast enough for standard VC time-cycles. Business failures began to increase, and even the biggest ventures became prone to collapse. To those inside the bubble it even seemed like AWE was perhaps impossible. 

Meanwhile, kite sports exploded, and power kites only got better year by year, an AWE sector success built on revenue, with a billions of hidden R&D value. In the rest of AWE R&D, naïve players had layered on costs and failure-modes. Dangerous rigid wing kites with complex controls and inferior power-to-mass became a fad--with single-line and com-link dependencies. Hopeful-monster systems emerged to their short violent ends, years before any conceivable pay-back.

The AWE R&D Bubble is still popping as this is written. Most of the speculative ventures did not think it would happen to them. They did not plan for M&A, for consolidation, for orderly exits. Their hair is on fire. They cannot not disclose crash statistics; they cannot admit defeat to investors. They look at each other and think the flaw must be in AWE itself, not themselves.

Meanwhile, grassroots AWE R&D growth has been solid. There are more academic AWE teams and small start-ups than ever. They learn from the failures of others. Lacking excess capital, they work lean and focus on fundamentals. They need for the losing ventures to shake-out. We have all seen this before. The 90's DotCom Bubble burst, but it hardly meant the end of tech, only the beginning of ever greater growth phases.