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DARPA Technical Accomplishments. An Historical Review of Selected DARPA Projects. Volume 1
Abstract
This is the first volume of a planned two-volume history of selected DARPA projects and programs that were undertaken from the agency's inception to the present day. The purpose is to record, for projects and programs having important outputs and for which adequate and appropriate data could be gathered, the chronological and technical histories in such a way that: (a) the influence of the projects or programs on defense and civilian technology could be traced: and (b) implementation lessons could be extracted that would help DARPA manage future programs in such a way as to enhance their chances of success. This volume describes the genesis of the study, the approach taken in carrying it out, and program histories of 28 DARPA projects. Each history describes the genesis of the project or program, the major participants and events in its lifetime, and contains a flow diagram illustrating the complex of interactions among organizations over time that characterize the project. Each project review ends with observations about the project's success and the nature of its impact. Volume II, will present 27 additional histories, in the same format, and will synthesize the observations about success and influence in such a way that DARPA can apply the results to future program management.
... DARPA's reputation for transformative innovation has been discussed extensively in the literature. It has been responsible for satellite technology, mobile GPS devices, autonomous vehicles, and a number of other defense-related innovations that subsequently spilled over into the civilian sector (Bonvillian 2006;Bonvillian and Van Atta 2011;Ree et al. 1990;Van Atta et al. 2003). DARPA is perhaps most famous for having created ARPA-NET, the precursor to the internet. ...
... This study builds upon a lineage of prior studies of the DARPAmodel by Ree et al. (1990), Fong (2001), Van Atta et al. (2003), Bonvillian (2006Bonvillian ( , 2009, and Bonvillian and Van Atta (2011). It confirms that factors identified by Bonvillian and Van Atta (2011) are present at DARPA, ARPA-E, and ATP. ...
Careful organization of research and development (R&D) is the key to transformative innovation. Among US federal R&D programs, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), and the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) were designed to empower groups of people to tackle complex problems and realize broad societal benefits. This article offers a taxonomy of heuristics that guide the work of these three agencies, grounded in qualitative accounts of management practices. At the heart of each agency is the duality of isolation and interaction, or ‘Island’ and ‘Bridge’. The Island clusters heuristics that isolate R&D programs from the concerns of operations (as well as those of basic research). The Bridge clusters heuristics that connects R&D to broader institutional contexts. Island þ Bridge is a framework for understanding a range of practices at organizations that aim to create radical change.
... In order to undertake frequent training for large engagements, SIMNET and SIMNET follow-ons have been consciously designed to trade some "objective reality" in order to maintain selective fidelity for the features needed to provide effective training. As Fora more complete discussion, see Reference [18] or [34]. mentioned earlier, a common subjective assessment is that SIMNET achieved 60% fidelity I at 10% of actual equipment costs. ...
... differences between the preand post-training Go percentages (i.e., comparing 59% and 73% versus 65% and 84%) indicate that the post-training percentages are less likely to be the same. 18 Hcwever, the data as shown combine exercise tasks where only a pre-test or only a post-test score was available, and include tasks that were judged not trainable by SIMNET. In addition, these comparisons may be flawed because the post-test differences may b. ...
The Committee on Analysis of Causes of Failure and Collapse of the 305-Meter Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine was asked to review the failure and collapse of the 305-Meter Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and explain the contributing factors and probable cause(s) of the failure, as well as recommendations for measures to prevent similar damage to other facilities in the future. After analyzing the data and the extensive and detailed forensic investigations commissioned by the University of Central Florida and the National Science Foundation (NSF),1 the committee consensus is that the root cause of the Arecibo Telescope’s collapse was unprecedented and accelerated long-term zinc creep induced failure of the telescope’s cable spelter sockets...
Drones are increasingly being used for a variety of purposes, such as monitoring forests and locating threatened individuals or objects in a large area. For countries where there is a huge border airport that becomes difficult to track, where even manned aircraft tracking ends up being very costly either in terms of fuel or aircraft maintenance, then the use of unmanned aerial vehicles as a solution is advisable. So manned aircraft are used more in cases where it becomes necessary.
However, there is still a very big problem, as the autonomy of the batteries used by these RPAS devices is very short. Hence, they must land at some point to replace the batteries and continue their mission. There are many studies being done to reduce the energy consumption of the aircraft’s built-in system, as well as to change their design, but the focus of this work is to use the findings from performed flights with electric aircraft using solar cells.
This research work studies the problem with the use of modeling and simulation, aiming to bring an improvement in the process.
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has played a remarkable role in the creation new transformative technologies, revolutionizing defense with drones and precision-guided munitions, and transforming civilian life with portable GPS receivers, voice-recognition software, self-driving cars, unmanned aerial vehicles, and, most famously, the ARPANET and its successor, the Internet.
Other parts of the U.S. Government and some foreign governments have tried to apply the ‘DARPA model’ to help develop valuable new technologies. But how and why has DARPA succeeded? Which features of its operation and environment contribute to this success? And what lessons does its experience offer for other U.S. agencies and other governments that want to develop and demonstrate their own ‘transformative technologies’?
This book is a remarkable collection of leading academic research on DARPA from a wide range of perspectives, combining to chart an important story from the Agency’s founding in the wake of Sputnik, to the current attempts to adapt it to use by other federal agencies. Informative and insightful, this guide is essential reading for political and policy leaders, as well as researchers and students interested in understanding the success of this agency and the lessons it offers to others.
The case compares two U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) programs from the 1970s and 1980s: (1) “stealth” combat aircraft, capable of evading detection or engagement by anti-aircraft systems, and (2) precision attack of hardened ground vehicles from “standoff” distances, i.e., far behind the battle lines. Conceived at roughly the same time, motivated by the same strategic challenge, and initially driven by the same DoD organization, stealth combat aircraft progressed from idea to deployment in less than eight years---an astounding pace for a complex military system---while a demonstrated system for standoff precision strike against mobile ground targets was not fully implemented. The case highlights the critical role of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the DoD, regarded as one of the most innovative entities in the U.S. federal government.
The case highlights factors that facilitate rapid, successful implementation of radically innovative or disruptive concepts. Students are introduced to the organizational realities facing such projects, including issues of strategic clarity, interdepartmental competition and cooperation, executive leadership, and timing. Comparing the differences in implementation of the two programs in the case reveals issues relevant to any large organization seeking to bring innovative concepts to fruition.
An intense-looking young man stepped out of his engineering lab at Caltech to watch what was happening. In the university???s nearby high-voltage laboratory, gigantic bolts of electricity were leaping eerily from outlandish equipment. It was 1931, and a Hollywood crew was filming the spark-filled special effects for the creation scene in Boris Karloff???s first Frankenstein movie. The serious-minded young engineer loved cinema, but as he walked back to his bench in the Kellogg Radiation Laboratory, he probably had no idea that a new kind of vacuum tube he was working on would in time revolutionize the movie business, enabling TV broadcasters to bounce Frankenstein and countless other films off satellites straight into people???s homes. The young man was Andrei ???Andy??? Haeff (father of coauthor Andre Haeff), and the device he was working on was an early form of what was later called the traveling-wave tube. This rather exotic type of vacuum tube was a key component in early telecommunications, radar, and television-broadcast systems. In 1952, for example, the British Broadcasting Corp. used the technology to forge a chain of microwave links between Manchester in England and a broadcasting station midway between Glasgow and Edinburgh, allowing the company to distribute television programming to Scotland without stringing lengthy cables. But it was the advent of communications satellites that allowed the low-weight, power-efficient traveling-wave tube to really shine. Nowadays everybody???s favorite signals???broadband, phone, TV???can reach almost anywhere on the globe, thanks to satellite- based traveling-wave tubes.
This article explores a 20-year series of ARPANET maps produced by the firm Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN). These BBN maps signify the earliest efforts to represent an early and central piece of the modern Internet, and they wind up as illustrations in contemporary discussions of ARPANET history and the early Internet. Once a functional tool for engineers, they now serve as an aesthetic backdrop used without explicit recognition of their intended purpose. The authors propose an excavation of their production, design conventions, and symbolic functions. They find that the maps represent a specific technological focus--the subnet--that worked well with the maps' network graph form and also aligned with the map creators' purposes during the network's early years. As a result, the continuities and systematic nature in the maps' form, one so central to the subnet, encourage us to read them from a certain technological perspective based in particular on the network's early, a view that may affect how retrospective histories depict the ARPANET's entire lifetime.
In the 1970s, infrared early warning satellites became as much a mainstay of U.S. defense posture as ground-based radars. During the 1950s and 1960s, however, development of a satellite system capable of detecting and tracking the heat signatures from intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or other rockets posed daunting technical challenges. If they were to provide the basis for ensuring that the United States would have sufficient time to respond with a nuclear counterattack, infrared early-warning satellites required greater reliability than Corona photographic reconnaissance satellites. Innovative conceptual work by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and its industrial contractors in the 1950s led to evolutionary development of the technology. From a scientific perspective, program participants faced a distinct lack of data on the infrared characteristics of the space environment. From an engineering perspective, they lacked extremely sensitive detectors capable of operating at longer wavelengths without cryogenic cooling. Despite disheartening setbacks, scientists and engineers managed in the 1960s to demonstrate the feasibility of space-based infrared early warning. This paper traces those trials and triumphs, beginning with the conceptual work of a few individual proponents at RAND Corporation, Lockheed Corporation, Aerojet Engineering Corporation, and elsewhere. From that work Lockheed drafted a development proposal for USAF Weapon System 117L (WS-117L) Subsystem G, the infrared detection and surveillance portion of the Advanced Reconnaissance System that Lockheed planners dubbed Pied Piper. By 1959, Subsystem G had become a separate satellite program identified as the Missile Defense Alarm System (MIDAS). During the decade of the 1960s, MIDAS underwent various designation changes, such as Program 461 and the Research Test Series (RTS). Although MIDAS satellites proved that ICBM launches could be detected reliably from an orbital altitude of 2,000 miles, the USAF opted in 1966 to pursue a different course for the follow-on Defense Support Program (DSP). From 1970 to the present day, DSP has provided highly reliable, real-time early warning from geosynchronous orbit.
Appendix A, however, indicates that some of these altitudes may be in question
- Hawkins
Hawkins, Appendix A, however, indicates that some of these altitudes may be in question.
21 Some later critics stated that ARGUS was poorly instrnnented. Cf. 'United States Skigh Altitude Tesi Experiments
21 Some later critics stated that ARGUS was poorly instrnnented. Cf. 'United States Skigh Altitude Tesi
Experiments," Los Alamos Report LA 6405, by H. Hoerlin, OCL 1976, p. 46.
4 A description of several of these fc.ztures & ESAR is jiven in "9,ectronically Scanned Air Force Systems I
- Moses A Dicks
,4 A description of several of these fc.ztures & ESAR is jiven in "9,ectronically Scanned Air Force
Systems I," by Moses A. Dicks, et aL. Radar "*chniques for Detection. Tracking and Navigauon,
Gordon and Breach 1964. p. 397ff.
ARPA apparently provided sene assistance to Dartmouth for this system, A.O. 1075 of 8/67. 12 See "Expanding Al Research and Fouinding ARPANET
- L Roberts
I "In at the Beginnings" by P.M. Morse, MIT 1977, p. 355. ARPA apparently provided sene
assistance to Dartmouth for this system, A.O. 1075 of 8/67.
12 See "Expanding Al Research and Fouinding ARPANET," by L. Roberts, in Expert Systems on
Artificial Intelligence, T. Bartee, ed., Sams, 1988. Roberts mentions that McCarthy and Minsky of
MITs Al group initially opposed the idea of others sharing their computer resources.
Continuing Control as a Requircment for Deterring 71 Discussion wit
- R Wohlstetter
- Brody
Wohlstetter and R. Brody. "Continuing Control as a Requircment for Deterring," ibid., p. 177.
71 Discussion wit;, V. Cerf, 5/89.
Communicatio's in Packet Networks
- W Tfxperience
- J Ith Speech Clifford
- Joseph W Weinstein
- Forgie
TFxperience W ith Speech Communicatio's in Packet Networks," by Clifford J. Weinstein and Joseph
W. Forgie, IEEE Journal, on sceected areas in communications, Vol. SAC-1 No. 6, See 1983, p. 963.
20-22
The Fifth Generation
- P Feigenbaum
- Mccorduck
Feigenbaum and P. McCorduck, The Fifth Generation, Addisson-Wesley, 1983, p. 65. AO 457 of
3/63 Heuristic Programming.
AO 1058 of 7/67 for "Intelligent Automata
- Al Expandhig
- Research
- Arpanet L Founding
- In Roberts
- Bartee
Expandhig Al Research and Founding ARPANET," by L Roberts, in Bartee, ibid., p. 229. AO 1058
of 7/67 for "Intelligent Automata."
21-4
Founding T70, 1)y J3CR Lick~i~r7"A.I. Duriag 7P'O's Middle Years:N'i;T was ni
- Me Early
Me Early YeAws, Founding T70, 1)y J3CR Lick~i~r.. in Bartze, ibid., p. 220.
"7"A.I. Duriag 7P'O's Middle Years," by U. Green, in bitiee, ibid., p 237.
~8Interstingly, ARA:N'i;T was ni, greeted enthusiaistically by all members of the Al crnmmunity, cf.
Robeits. ibid.