History
DARPA was founded in 1958 by President Eisenhower as
a direct response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the
first man-made satellite to orbit the earth. In the
intervening half century the agency has been responsible
for a strange mix of military and civilian inventions
and protocols. The M16, Cruise missile, Stealth
technology, and MIRACL (a chemical laser) came out of
the same shop as did the Arpanet (forerunner of the
Internet), the computer mouse, night vision, the first
GPS satellite, the Illiac supercomputers at the Univ. of Illinois,
and MEMs (microelectromechanical systems, or nano
machines).
In the agency’s own words, “DARPA’s
original mission, inspired by the Soviet Union beating
the
United States into
space with Sputnik, was to prevent technological
surprise. This mission has evolved over time. Today,
DARPA’s mission is to prevent technological surprise for
us and to create technological surprise for our
adversaries. Stealth is one example of how DARPA created
technological surprise.”
With such a strong emphasis on
“surprise” built into its organizational genetics, you
would expect the security surrounding its operations to
be locked down with hardened steel and dense layers of
redundancy. That expectation doesn’t prepare the browser
for the location directions on the DARPA website or the
advice, “Visitor parking is not available in the DARPA
building. However, commercial parking and street-side
parking is available in the immediate area.” You’re
encouraged not bring any weapons with you—the prohibited
list includes “Guns, Explosives or ammunition, Knives
with blades over 2½ inches, and Clubs, numchucks, or
other martial arts devices”—and you’re also advised to
leave recording devices, like cameras, at home.
A Two-edged Sword
Clearly, DARPA’s purpose is to create “technological
superiority of the U.S. military
and [to] prevent technological surprise from harming our
national security,” but frequently the byproducts of its
“revolutionary, high-payoff research” can be of
substantial benefit to the civilian population.
The core technologies include
computing and information technology, biological
systems, microsystems, mathematics, lasers, power and
energy, and manufacturing. A look at some of the ongoing
projects offers proof of Renaissance scope of its
technology.
HEDLight
(High Efficiency Distributed Lighting) is a clever
lateral solution to providing lighting on a warship.
“Current lighting systems use electrical distribution
and the generation of light at the point-of-use.
HEDLight remote source lighting uses centralized light
generation and optically transports the light to the
point-of-use. This allows the lighting system electrical
circuitry and wiring to be concentrated, protected, and
removed to the interior of the warship, thereby removing
a source of vulnerability from the outer-envelope.”
The computer research is really
interesting. From supercomputers to self-forming
networks, the research could have consequences as
far-reaching as the Internet.
Robust, Secure,
Self-forming Networks
As the Department of Defense switches over to a
“Network-Centric Operations,” there arose new
requirements for the new networks. According to DARPA,
“In order for these networks to realize their full
military potential,
people can no
longer be central to managing and administering them.
The networks must be able to form, manage, defend, and
heal themselves, so they always function at the
enormously high speeds that provide their advantages.”
Cognitive
Computing
Hoping to transfer the intelligence to the
instruction sets (programs), the DoD describes a
significant future computing need as “autonomous
platforms that behave reliably without constant human
intervention, intelligence systems that effectively
integrate and interpret massive sensor streams, and
decision-support systems that can adapt rapidly.” One
application for this improved computing might be DARPA’s
GALE (Global Autonomous Language Exploitation) program.
With the shortage of translators,
there’s a pressing need “to translate and distill
foreign language material (e.g., television shows and
newspapers) in near real-time, [to] highlight the
salient information, and [to] store the results in a
searchable database.” The way GALE would work with
broadcast media involves a three-step process: Speech is
captured, then transcribed, and then translated, to be
stored in a sortable database—all with no intervening
human linguists. The 2010 completion goal for GALE is
perhaps too optimistic. Human language has proved to be
a particularly stubborn problem for machines.
There is also a current project to
create a chip-scale atomic clock to “provide very
accurate time as required, for example, in assured
network communications.”
New techniques are being developed to
extract titanium from its ore and processing it for a
much cheaper version of military-grade titanium alloy.
Possible uses for the lightweight metal might be in the
prosthetics that respond to the brain’s instructions or
in the mechanical exoskeletons that will protect
soldiers while providing enhanced strength and
endurance—two other current projects.
The research in the Surviving Blood
Loss program, if successful, will have battlefield and
emergency room applications, as will the accelerated
manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.
The alternative energy research is
focused on finding portable, efficient, compact power
sources. MISER (Mobile Integrated Sustainable Energy
Recovery) is looking for a way to convert military
waste, such as plastic, into power to run generators.
The goal of the Very High Efficiency Solar Cell program
is photovoltaic devices with efficiencies exceeding 50%.
The DARPA BioFuels program is experimenting with agri-
and aquaculture materials to replace oil with plants,
algae, fungi, or even bacteria.
The blue and gold DARPA logo bears two
mottoes--“Bridging the Gap” and “Powered by Ideas.”
Funded by the DoD to prevent surprises for the nation’s
warfighters (their own unique word for combatants), the
agency also has inspired technology over the last half
century that has helped us get to the moon and that
helps us find our way using dash-mounted computers that
can read maps drawn by satellites floating over above
us. Visit www.darpa.mil
for more information on current projects.
Michael Castelluccio
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