DARPA

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is part of the United States Department of Defense making "pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security."

Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) on February 7, 1958, in response to the Soviet Union's successful launch of the first satellite into earth's orbit, Sputnik 1, in 1957. The successful launch of Sputnik 1 caught the US government and president Eisenhower off guard. Eisenhower went on to say that ARPA was created to "prevent technological surprise."

ARPA would later be renamed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1972. DARPA briefly became ARPA again from 1993-1996, before adopting DARPA again in 1996. According to the Deputy Secretary of Defense at the time, William Perry, DAPRA adopted its former name ARPA to "expand the agency's mission to pursue imaginative and innovative research and development projects having significant potential for both military and commercial (dual-use) applications."

DARPA Overview

Since the founding of DARPA in 1958, the agency has been responsible for developing several important technologies. Notable technologies developed, or helped, by DARPA include the following: the internet, graphical user interfaces (GUIs), the weather satellite, interactive maps (Example: Google Maps), voice-recognition systems (Example: Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri), Unix, cloud computing, and Global Positioning Systems (GPS).

DARPA's research programs and investment strategy use a portfolio approach. Their approach, in this case, reaches for the biggest potential outcome from these research programs, meaning DARPA approaches them with a high appetite for risk. Objectives are pursued through various hundreds of programs, are finite in duration, and address a range of technology opportunities and national security challenges. Some of those programs include the following:

This program seeks to enhance national defense through improving the synthetic biology capabilities of the United States of America. The living foundries program consists of two primary programs: 1. Living foundries: Advanced Tools and Capabilities for Generalizable Platforms (ATCG), and 2. Living Foundries: 1000 Molecules.

This program works to produce new molecules, from stimulants and medicines capable of countering emerging threats, coatings, dyes, and specialty fuels. Rather than following an iterative design/test cycle limited by the molecular expertise of the chemist, DARPA's Accelerated Molecular Discovery program is developing a systematic approach intended to increase the pace of discovery. This includes developing a closed-loop system to build and integrate tools for extracting existing data from databases and text, executing autonomous experimental measurement and optimization, and incorporating computational approaches to develop physics-based representations and predictive tools.

As the name suggests, the Battlefield Medicine program seeks to address the medical supply logistics limitations on battlefields. This is done through integrated research thrusts, including the Pharmacy on Demand and Biologically-derived Medicines on Demand initiatives. These efforts seek to develop miniaturized pharmaceutical ingredients and therapeutic proteins for battlefield threats and medical needs as they arise.

The Direct On-Chip Digital Optical Synthesizer program works to use heterogeneous photonic integration to arrange necessary components, such as tunable laser sources, optical modulators, non-linear photonic elements, and CMOS radiofrequency and control circuitry onto a chip with power consumption of less than 1 watt. The chip is intended to act as a gearbox to translate the stability and accuracy of an RF signal to the optical domain.

Hypersonic systems operate at five times the speed of sound (Mach 5), offering longer ranges with shorter response times, to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of weapon systems. The program works to develop and demonstrate technologies to enable effective air-launched hypersonic cruise missiles, with technologies including advanced air vehicle configurations capable of efficient hypersonic flight, hydrocarban scramjet-powered propulsion to enable sustained hypersonic cruise, approaches to managing thermal stresses of high-temperature cruise, and affordable systems designs and manufacturing approaches.

DARPA's Millimeter Wave GaN Maturation program works to develop GaN transistor technology to achieve high-speed and large voltage swing. This program builds on previous program successes to mature GaN transistors, including improving device yield, reducing process cycle time, and demonstrating key millimeter wave power amplifiers and mixed-signals circuits through the use of multi-project wafer runs.