During my last couple of years in the U.S. Air Force, I was in charge of a team of communications software engineers developing new (“store and forward”) military message switching systems.
At the time, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was fully engaged in developing and implementing the ARPANET, a communications system based on packet switching technology and using what became the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) communications protocols, both of which in effect became the technical foundation for what we now know as the Internet.
Our team studiously followed the development of the ARPA network and its packet switching technology, well aware that it would eventually replace the more traditional circuit switching and message switching technology.
It was my first contact with DARPA and ever since then the amazing talent and breathtaking scientific and technical accomplishments at DARPA have awed me.
For nearly sixty years, DARPA has made “pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies” within “DoD’s science and technology community and in the larger U.S. technology ecosystem, to pursue challenging but potentially paradigm-shifting technologies in support of national security.”
Today, DARPA is hosting “DARPA Demo Day 2016” at the Pentagon to give the defense community an up-close look at the agency’s portfolio of innovative technologies and military systems demonstrating DARPA’s ongoing work on more than 60 exciting DARPA programs, all in support of our nation’s military and national security services and capabilities.
DARPA — one of 17 defense agencies working directly under the Secretary of Defense office — employs approximately 220 government professionals, including nearly 100 program managers (military personnel included), who together oversee about 250 research and development programs under a FY2016 enacted budget of $2.87 billion.
DARPA:
The genesis of [DARPA’s mission] and of DARPA itself dates to the launch of Sputnik in 1957, and a commitment by the United States that, from that time forward, it would be the initiator and not the victim of strategic technological surprises. Working with innovators inside and outside of government, DARPA has repeatedly delivered on that mission, transforming revolutionary concepts and even seeming impossibilities into practical capabilities. The ultimate results have included not only game-changing military capabilities such as precision weapons and stealth technology, but also such icons of modern civilian society such as the Internet, automated voice recognition and language translation, and Global Positioning System receivers small enough to embed in myriad consumer devices.
Back to DARPA Demo Day. From a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency News Release:
DARPA Demo Day highlights agency programs at various stages of maturity, including:
— Some whose products are already being adopted by the military services and are making a difference for warfighters;
— Some that are advancing through the technological frontier that separates the seemingly impossible from the doable; and
— Some that are in the earliest phases of development, but whose potential to radically change the technological and security landscape is so great that they’re already influencing the department’s strategic thinking.
Range of Technologies and Scientific Domains
DARPA’s commitment to bolstering national security encompasses an extraordinary range of technologies and scientific domains.
These include dimensional scales from the atomic to the celestial, time scales from attoseconds to decades, spectral scales from radio waves to infrared to gamma rays, and, in its most recently created technical office, biological scales from genes and proteins to neurons and organs to infectious diseases and global health.
DARPA Demo Day highlights strategic investments in 10 categories spanning all of the agency’s research focus areas:
— Air: Maintaining air superiority in contested environments through unmanned aerial systems, advanced hypersonics, improved human-machine collaboration, and supervised autonomy.
— Biology: Developing breakthrough technologies to outpace infectious diseases, accelerate progress in synthetic biology, and explore new neurotechnologies.
— Counterterrorism: Mitigating terrorists’ capabilities through inventive reconnaissance, big-data analysis, and technologies that advance understanding of social behavior.
— Cyber: Protecting the data behind critical decisions through automated cyber-defense systems, hack-resistant software and networks, and real-time visualization of cyberspace.
— Ground Warfare: Exerting control on the ground through manned and unmanned systems that bolster squad-level capabilities such as reach, situational awareness and maneuverability.
— Maritime: Enhancing maritime agility in all conditions through unmanned surface and undersea systems, novel communications and positioning technologies, and distributed capabilities.
— Microsystems: Advancing communications, imaging, information processing and physical security through revolutionary microelectronic, microelectromechanical and photonic devices.
— Seeds of Surprise: Expanding the technological frontier by applying deep mathematics, inventing new chemistries, processes and materials, and harnessing quantum physics.
— Space: Asserting robust capabilities in space through robotics, new launch systems, and satellite architectures, and groundbreaking technologies for space situational awareness
— Spectrum: Assuring dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum in congested and contested environments through new materials and tools, faster chips, and smarter, more agile mobile networks
Should the reader be impressed by DARPA, he or she will be equally impressed by other Defense and military agencies with similar advanced and fascinating missions and accomplishments in the scientific research, development and engineering arenas — several of them led by military personnel and many of them manned by military scientists.
Stay tuned.
Image courtesy DARPA
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.