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DARPA's former headquarters in the
Virginia Square neighborhood of Arlington. This agency recently moved to 675 North Randolph Street, near the Ballston Common Mall.
The
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (
DARPA) is an
agency of the
United States Department of Defense
responsible for the development of new technologies for use by the
military. DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many
technologies which have had a major effect on the world, including
computer networking, as well as
NLS, which was both the first
hypertext system, and an important precursor to the contemporary ubiquitous
graphical user interface.
DARPA began as the
Advanced Research Projects Agency (
ARPA) created in 1958 by President
Dwight D. Eisenhower
for the purpose of forming and executing research and development
projects to expand the frontiers of technology and science and able to
reach far beyond immediate military requirements.
[3] The administration was responding to the
Soviet launching of
Sputnik 1 in 1957, and ARPA's mission was to ensure
U.S. military technology be more sophisticated than that of the nation's potential enemies. From DARPA's own introduction:
[4]
DARPA’s original mission, established in 1958, was to prevent
technological surprise like the launch of Sputnik, which signaled that
the Soviets had beaten the U.S. into space. The mission statement has
evolved over time. Today, DARPA’s mission is still to prevent
technological surprise to the US, but also to create technological
surprise for our enemies.
ARPA was renamed to "DARPA" (for Defense) in March 1972, then renamed
"ARPA" in February 1993, and then renamed "DARPA" again in March 1996.
DARPA is independent from other more conventional military
research and development
and reports directly to senior Department of Defense management. DARPA
has around 240 personnel (about 140 technical) directly managing a $3
billion budget. These figures are "on average" since DARPA focuses on
short-term (two to four year) projects run by small, purpose-built
teams.
History
DARPA achievements for the past 50 years
Early history
The creation of DARPA was authorized by
President Eisenhower
in 1958 for the purpose of forming and executing research and
development projects to expand the frontiers of technology and science,
and able to reach far beyond immediate military requirements.,
[3] the two relevant acts being the Supplemental Military Construction Authorization (Air Force)
[5]
(Public Law 85-325) and Department of Defense Directive 5105.15, in
February 1958. Its creation was directly attributed to the launching of
Sputnik and to U.S. realization that the
Soviet Union had developed the capacity to rapidly exploit military technology.
Additionally, the political and defense communities recognized the
need for a high-level Department of Defense organization to formulate
and execute R&D projects that would expand the frontiers of
technology beyond the immediate and specific requirements of the
Military Services and their laboratories. In pursuit of this mission,
DARPA has developed and transferred technology programs encompassing a
wide range of scientific disciplines which address the full spectrum of
national security needs.
From 1958 to 1965, ARPA's emphasis centered on major national issues, including space,
ballistic missile defense, and
nuclear test detection. During 1960, all of its civilian space programs were transferred to the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the military space programs to the individual Services.
This allowed ARPA to concentrate its efforts on the
Project Defender (defense against ballistic missiles),
Project Vela (nuclear test detection), and
Project AGILE (
counterinsurgency R&D) Programs, and to begin work on computer processing,
behavioral sciences, and materials sciences. The DEFENDER and AGILE Programs formed the foundation of DARPA sensor,
surveillance, and directed energy R&D, particularly in the study of
radar,
infrared sensing, and
x-ray/
gamma ray detection.
ARPA at this point (1959) played an early role in
Transit (also called NavSat) a predecessor to the
Global Positioning System (GPS).
[6]
"Fast-forward to 1959 when a joint effort between DARPA and the Johns
Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory began to fine-tune the early
explorers’ discoveries. TRANSIT, sponsored by the Navy and developed
under the leadership of Dr. Richard Kirschner at Johns Hopkins, was the
first satellite positioning system."
[7][8]
During the late 1960s, with the transfer of these mature programs to
the Services, ARPA redefined its role and concentrated on a diverse set
of relatively small, essentially exploratory research programs. The
agency was renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
in 1972, and during the early 1970s, it emphasized direct energy
programs, information processing, and tactical technologies.
Concerning information processing, DARPA made great progress, initially through its support of the development of
time-sharing (all modern operating systems rely on concepts invented for the
Multics system, developed by a cooperation among
Bell Labs,
General Electric and
MIT, which DARPA supported by funding
Project MAC at MIT with an initial two-million-dollar grant).
[9]
DARPA supported the evolution of the
ARPANET (the first wide-area packet switching network), Packet Radio Network, Packet Satellite Network and ultimately, the
Internet and research in the
artificial intelligence fields of speech recognition and signal processing, including parts of
Shakey the robot.
[10] DARPA also funded the development of the
Douglas Engelbart's NLS computer system and
The Mother of All Demos; and the
Aspen Movie Map, which was probably the first
hypermedia system and an important precursor of
virtual reality.
Later history
The
Mansfield Amendment
of 1973 expressly limited appropriations for defense research (through
ARPA/DARPA) to projects with direct military application. Some
[who?]
contend that the amendment devastated American science, since
ARPA/DARPA was a major funding source for basic science projects of the
time; the
National Science Foundation never made up the difference as expected.
The resulting "
brain drain"
is also credited with boosting the development of the fledgling
personal computer industry. Many young computer scientists fled from the
universities to startups and private research labs like
Xerox PARC.
Between 1976 and 1981, DARPA's major projects were dominated by air,
land, sea, and space technology, tactical armor and anti-armor programs,
infrared sensing for space-based surveillance, high-energy laser
technology for space-based missile defense, antisubmarine warfare,
advanced cruise missiles, advanced aircraft, and defense applications of
advanced computing. These large-scale technological program
demonstrations were joined by integrated circuit research, which
resulted in submicrometer electronic technology and electron devices
that evolved into the Very Large Scale Integration (
VLSI) Program and the Congressionally mandated charged particle beam program.
Many of the successful programs were transitioned to the Services, such as the foundation technologies in
automatic target recognition, space based sensing, propulsion, and materials that were transferred to the
Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), later known as the
Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), now titled the
Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
Recent history
During the 1980s, the attention of the Agency was centered on
information processing and aircraft-related programs, including the
National Aerospace Plane (NASP) or
Hypersonic Research Program. The
Strategic Computing Program
enabled DARPA to exploit advanced processing and networking
technologies and to rebuild and strengthen relationships with
universities after the
Vietnam War. In addition, DARPA began to pursue new concepts for small, lightweight satellites (
LIGHTSAT) and directed new programs regarding defense manufacturing, submarine technology, and armor/anti-armor.
On October 28, 2009 the agency broke ground on a new facility in Arlington, Virginia a few miles from the Pentagon.
[11]
In fall 2011, DARPA hosted the
100-Year Starship Symposium with the aim of getting the public to start thinking seriously about interstellar travel.
[12]
| DARPA History |
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The Formative Years
(1958–1975)
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The Cold War Era
(1975–1989)
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The Post-Soviet Years
(1989–Present)
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Organization
Key characteristics
According to former DARPA Director
Tony Tether and
W. B. Bonvillian (“Power Play”, W. B. Bonvillian,
The American Interest, Volume II, p 39, November–December 2006), DARPA's key characteristics to be replicated to reproduce DARPA's success are:
[13]
- Small and flexible: DARPA has only about 140 technical professionals; DARPA presents itself as “100 geniuses connected by a travel agent.”[14]
- Flat organization: DARPA avoids hierarchy, essentially operating at
only two management levels to ensure the free and rapid flow of
information and ideas, and rapid decision-making.
- Autonomy and freedom from bureaucratic impediments: DARPA has an
exemption from Title V civilian personnel specifications, which provides
for a direct authority to hire talents with the expediency not allowed
by the standard civil service processes.
- Eclectic, world-class technical staff and performers: DARPA seeks
great talents and ideas from industry, universities, government
laboratories, and individuals, mixing disciplines and theoretical and
experimental strength. DARPA neither owns nor operates any laboratories
or facilities, and the overwhelming majority of the research it sponsors
is done in industry and universities. Very little of DARPA’s research
is performed at government labs.
- Teams and networks: At its very best, DARPA creates and sustains
great teams of researchers from different disciplines that collaborate
and share in the teams’ advances.
- Hiring continuity and change: DARPA’s technical staff is hired or
assigned for four to six years. All key staff i.e. Office Directors and
Program Managers are rotated to ensure constant infusion of fresh
thinking and perspectives.
- Project-based assignments organized around a challenge model: DARPA
organizes a significant part of its portfolio around specific technology
challenges. It foresees innovation-based capabilities and then works
back to the fundamental breakthroughs required to make them possible.
Although individual projects typically last three to five years, major
technological challenges may be addressed over longer time periods,
ensuring patient investment on a series of focused steps and keeping
teams together for ongoing collaboration.
- Outsourced support personnel: DARPA extensively leverages technical,
contracting, and administrative services from other DoD agencies and
branches of the military. This provides DARPA the flexibility to get
into and out of an area without the burden of sustaining staff, while
building cooperative alliances with its “agents.” These outside agents
help create a constituency in their respective organizations for
adopting the technology.
- Outstanding program managers: The best DARPA program managers have
always been freewheeling zealots in pursuit of their goals. The
Director’s most important task is to recruit and hire very creative
people with big ideas, and empower them.
- Acceptance of failure: DARPA pursues breakthrough opportunities and
is very tolerant of technical failure if the payoff from success will be
great enough.
- Orientation to revolutionary breakthroughs in a connected approach:
DARPA historically has focused not on incremental but radical
innovation. It emphasizes high-risk investment, moves from fundamental
technological advances to prototyping, and then hands off the system
development and production to the military services or the commercial
sector.
- Mix of connected collaborators: DARPA typically builds strong teams
and networks of collaborators, bringing in a range of technical
expertise and applicable disciplines, and involving university
researchers and technology firms that are often not significant defense
contractors or beltway consultants.
Current program offices
DARPA has seven program offices, all of which report to the DARPA director:
- The Defense Sciences Office (DSO)
vigorously pursues the most promising technologies within a broad
spectrum of the science and engineering research communities and
develops those technologies into important, radically new military
capabilities.[15]
- The Microsystems Technology Office (MTO)
mission focuses on the heterogeneous microchip-scale integration of
electronics, photonics, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Their
high risk/high payoff technology is aimed at solving the national level
problems of protection from biological, chemical and information attack
and to provide operational dominance for mobile distributed command and
control, combined manned/unmanned warfare, and dynamic, adaptive
military planning and execution.
- The Biological Technologies Office (BTO)
fosters, demonstrates, and transitions breakthrough fundamental
research, discoveries, and applications that integrate biology,
engineering, and computer science for national security. Created in
April 2014 by DARPA director Aratir Prabhakar, taking programs from the MTO and DSO divisions.[19]
Former offices
- Information Awareness Office: 2002–2003
- The Advanced Technology Office (ATO)
researched, demonstrated, and developed high payoff projects in
maritime, communications, special operations, command and control, and
information assurance and survivability mission areas.[citation needed]
- The Special Projects Office (SPO)
researched, developed, demonstrated, and transitioned technologies
focused on addressing present and emerging national challenges. SPO
investments ranged from the development of enabling technologies to the
demonstration of large prototype systems. SPO developed technologies to
counter the emerging threat of underground facilities used for purposes
ranging from command-and-control, to weapons storage and staging, to the
manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. SPO developed significantly
more cost-effective ways to counter proliferated, inexpensive cruise
missiles, UAVs, and other platforms used for weapon delivery, jamming,
and surveillance. SPO invested in novel space technologies across the
spectrum of space control applications including rapid access, space
situational awareness, counterspace, and persistent tactical grade
sensing approaches including extremely large space apertures and
structures.
- The Information Systems Office (ISO)
in the 1990s developed system applications of advanced information
technologies. It was a predecessor to the Information Exploitation
Office.[citation needed]
A 1991 reorganization created several offices which existed throughout the early 1990s:
[20]
- The Electronic Systems Technology Office
combined areas of the Defense Sciences Office and the Defense
Manufacturing Office. This new office will focus on the boundary between
general-purpose computers and the physical world, such as sensors,
displays and the first few layers of specialized signal-processing that
couple these modules to standard computer interfaces.
- The Computing Systems Technology Office
combined functions of the old Information Sciences and Tactical
Technology office. The office "will work scalable parallel and
distributed heterogeneous computing systems technologies," DoD said.[citation needed]
- The Software and Intelligent Systems Technology Office and the Computing Systems office
will have responsibility associated with the Presidential
High-Performance Computing Initiative. The Software office will also be
responsible for "software systems technology, machine intelligence and
software engineering."
- The Land Systems Office was created to develop advanced land vehicle and anti-armor systems, once the domain of the Tactical Technology Office
- The Undersea Warfare Office
combined areas of the Advanced Vehicle Systems and Tactical Technology
offices to develop and demonstrate submarine stealth and counterstealth
and automation.
Reorganization in 2010 merged two offices:
- The Transformational Convergence Technology Office (TCTO)
mission was to advance new crosscutting capabilities derived from a
broad range of emerging technological and social trends, particularly in
areas related to computing and computing-reliant subareas of the life
sciences, social sciences, manufacturing, and commerce. The TCTO was
folded into the I2O in 2010.[16]
- The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO)
focused on inventing the networking, computing, and software
technologies vital to ensuring DOD military superiority. The IPTO was
combined with TCTO in 2010 to form the I2O.[citation needed]
Notable fiction
ARPA/DARPA is well known as a high-tech government agency, and as
such has many appearances in popular fiction. Some realistic references
to ARPA in fiction are in
Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X (DARPA consults on a technical threat),
[42] in episodes of television program
The West Wing (the ARPA-DARPA distinction), the television program
Numb3rs[43] (DARPA research into creating the first self-aware computer), and in the motion picture
Executive Decision (use of a one-of-a-kind experimental prototype in an emergency). It is also in the movie
Chain Reaction, starring Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman.
[citation needed]
Other references often attribute to DARPA an operational or political
role, in addition to its high-tech responsibilities. Examples are the
Matthew Reilly books
Temple and
Hell Island, the
James Rollins Sigma Force book series, and the video game series
Metal Gear Solid, as well as the video games
Infamous,
Vanquish, and
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction. DARPA also appears in three novels by
Andy McDermott,
The Search for Excalibur,
The Covenant of Genesis and
The Empire of Gold.
[citation needed] The institution
Dharma Initiative in the series
Lost bear a resemblance to DARPA more than in the name.
See also
General
- History of the Internet
- People: Barry Boehm, Vint Cerf, Douglas Engelbart, Robert Fano, Anup K. Ghosh, James Hendler, Bob Kahn, JCR Licklider, John Poindexter, Larry Roberts, Robert Sproull, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, Gio Wiederhold.
Sister organizations
International equivalents
