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.