legendary darpa--4/28/25
Today's selection-- from Industrial Policy for the United States by Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is the research institution responsible for the creation of the internet, GPS, and any number of other breakthrough technologies:
“Created in 1958 in response to the shock of Sputnik, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (originally and also later called the Advanced Research Projects Agency) was founded to ensure that the US would thereafter be the initiator, rather than the victim, of militarily significant technological advances. This remains its primary mission today. ARPA aimed to overcome the then stove-piped military services' procurement programs and bridge the disconnect with US space programs.
“DARPA's goal is radically new technologies in defense, space, and dual-use military-civilian products. It develops and demonstrates them, then leaves further development and production to the private sector and the armed services. It has, in the words of the Harvard Business Review, ‘[T]he longest standing, most consistent track record of radical innovation in history.’
“DARPA does not have its own labs or perform its own research. Instead, it funds research by companies, universities, federal labs, and nonprofits. It has only 200 employees, but an annual budget of $3.5-4 billion. Its focus has shifted from the space race (1950s) to the Vietnam War (1970s) to the semiconductor industry (1980s) to information technology (1990s) to intelligence gathering for counterterrorism, Iraq, and Afghanistan (2000s). Since 2010, it has focused on AI, quantum computing, and neuro-synaptic processors, which are microprocessors modeled on biological brains.
“DARPA has large and stable federal funding, autonomy within the defense bureaucracy, and exemption from civil service rules and many other federal regulations. It also has a well-funded customer, DOD, even if the adoption of its innovations has sometimes been less straightforward than the military's high-tech reputation would imply.
“This partial list necessarily omits those that are still classified. The Information Revolution. In the 1960s, ARPA created ARPANET, a computer network of that eventually evolved into the internet. Other projects led to personal computing, voice recognition, touchscreen displays, many key wireless communications technologies, lithium-ion batteries, artificial intelligence, cellular roaming technology, speech recognition, and graphical user interfaces. Smart Weapons. Battlefields increasingly defined by sophisticated information and communications systems, ‘smart’ precision-strike weapons, stealth aircraft, drones, and soon AI, resulting in the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs.
“The Global Positioning System. In the late 1950s, DARPA started working on satellite navigation systems that evolved into today's GPS.
“Night Vision. DARPA developed this technology based on infrared detecting sensors. It has helped American soldiers operate in and, until recently, dominate night battlefields.
“Stealth Technology. DARPA developed technologies to make aircraft harder to track by radar and infrared. These included new aircraft shapes, radar absorbing surfaces, exhaust cooling, and active radar signal cancelation. The first test plane flew in 1977 and the first operational stealth aircraft, the F-117A fighter, in 1983.
“Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). MEMS include accelerometers, used in vehicle airbags, drone guidance systems, and smartphones. Another example is ‘lab on a chip’ medical diagnostic systems.
“The agency continues to evolve. In 2017, it launched its Disruptioneering initiative, which seeks rapid identification and exploration of high-risk ideas that could lead to quantum leaps forward. Program managers are tasked with developing small programs ( $ 5 million or less) that can progress from idea to contract award within 90 days.
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“DARPA is small and flexible. It has only 100 program managers, augmented by a similar number of support personnel, mainly contract managers and consultants. These have been characterized as a shield protecting its leadership and program managers from bureaucratic demands that would sap their energy and attention. It has a flat organizational structure with a director's office, six technical program offices, and three other specialized offices. Its program offices are:
“The Biological Technologies Office researches bio-related topics such as countermeasures against bioterrorism and support for warfighters' physiological readiness.
“The Information Innovation Office researches information technologies to support military operations, including cyberwarfare, and seeks to anticipate new modes of warfare in these domains.
“The Microsystems Technology Office researches microprocessors, microelectromechanical systems, and photonic devices, including phased-array radars, high-energy lasers, and infrared imaging.
“The Tactical Technology Office researches revolutionary ground, maritime, air, and space system platforms, a/k/a vehicles.
“The Strategic Technology Office researches increasing military effectiveness, cost leverage, and adaptability.
“The Defense Sciences Office researches foundational physical and social sciences including mathematics, computational design, sensing, and social systems.
“The Defense Sciences Office, sometimes called DARPA's DARPA, enjoys the broadest latitude, with many of its projects starting as ‘blue sky adventures.’
“The DARPA director's most important job is recruiting talented program managers. DARPA recruits from universities, government labs, and the private sector. A former director said in 2016 that he looked for a technically strong individual who had project management experience and was ‘a bit of a dreamer and not constrained by thinking “this we know to be true.”’ DARPA hires a mix of people with theoretical and experimental backgrounds.
“Because program managers have nearly absolute power in assembling their research teams, the position attracts ambitious, qualified applicants. Former director Arati Prabhakar told one potential recruit, ‘You don't want to go to a university, where you'll have graduate students working for you. If you come to DARPA, you'll have professors working for you.’ Program managers are responsible for creating, and if necessary terminating, projects and programs.
They may, but are not required to, use peer review to assess proposals.
“Although DARPA's leadership must approve their proposals, program managers have a degree of independence that is unique in the federal bureaucracy. They are expected to remain at the agency no more than three to five years, ensuring a constant inflow of new ideas and preventing institutional ossification. One program manager commented in 2016 that the sense of time ticking is ‘the heart of the whole thing. It is an impetus to venture into the unknown, to get people to put something forward, to build a prototype, warts and all.’
“DARPA enjoys budgetary ‘other transactions’ authority, which lets it enter into agreements with outside parties tailored to project needs and not necessarily conforming to the traditional federal formats of grant, contract, or cooperative agreement. It can augment its own staff with temporary assignees from the Defense Department, the military, other federal agencies, and elsewhere. This lets it staff up quickly in a particular area without the burden of sustaining permanent capabilities. These staff then often become advocates for DARPA-developed technologies when they return to their home organizations.
“Because DARPA pursues innovations at the edge of the possible, it often faces the possibility, even likelihood, of failure. But unlike most government bureaucracies, where failures can be career-enders, it is tolerant if the potential payoff was large enough. Furthermore, its apparent failures often succeed in their larger consequences. For example, its Strategic Computing Initiative of the 1980s spent billions in a vain attempt to achieve artificial intelligence, which required more computing power than was available at that time. However, as one journalist notes, ‘this failure laid the foundations for most of the great computing science advances in artificial intelligence ... So, what you call “success” or “failure” sometimes just takes time.’”
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