DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY 



DARPA'S Mission 



The Defense Advanced Research Projects 

 Agency (DARPA) functions as a corporate re- 

 search and advanced development center for the 

 Department of Defense. It develops long-range, 

 high-payoflF technologies which do not fall within 

 specific military services (Army, Navy, and Air 

 Force) programs or which have been assigned by 

 the Secretary of Defense or the Director of De- 

 fense Research and Engineering. DARPA has rap- 

 id response and a minimum of administrative lev- 

 els facilitated by the lack of an implicit commit- 

 ment to production. All research is extramural — 

 either at industrial or academic organizations or at 

 service or other governmental laboratories. 



Role of Basic Research 



DARPA supports no basic research for the ac- 

 cumulation of abstract knowledge. DARPA does 

 support fundamental research in the 6.1 program 

 to provide a foundation for DARPA's major de- 

 velopmental thrusts. 



Examples of Basic Research 



Major programs in the past decade that have 

 either been completed or largely transferred to a 

 using agency include: 



• The Inter-Disciplinary Laboratories in ma- 

 terial sciences, established at 12 universities 

 with core support for the materials communi- 

 ty and an emphasis on local management for 

 developing a coordinated interdisciplinary 

 attack on research problems in material sci- 

 ences, was transferred to the National Sci- 

 ence Foundation. 



• The ILLIAC IV, a supercomputer for re- 

 search in parallel array processing, was be- 

 gun under the 6.1 program. The computer is 

 now operational and housed at the Ames 

 Research Laboratory of the National Aero- 

 nautics and Space Administration. 



• The ARPANET, a worldwide communica- 

 tions network linking hundreds of comput- 

 ers, to be used for research, remote compu- 

 tation, and distributed computation, was 

 developed in the 6.1 program. It has now 

 become operational and is managed by the 

 Defense Communications Agency. 



86 DEFENSE 



• A five-year effort in speech understanding by 

 computer was recently completed. 



• Work in rare earth alloys of unusual magnet- 

 ic properties has been transferred to the mili- 

 tary services. 



• Efforts in unconventional rotating electrical 

 machinery including homopolar motors, su- 

 perconducting materials, and high current 

 solid brushes are being transferred to the mil- 

 itary services for design and further develop- 

 ment. 



The following continuing programs are just now 

 beginning to pay off: 



• A large effort in materials for electro-optical 

 systems including laser windows and mirrors, 

 optical fibers, Ill-V semiconductors (for a 

 variety of uses), pyroelectric materials for 

 vidicons, etc., supports a number of DARPA 

 sensor programs. 



• A ceramic materials program is just now 

 developing test components for production of 

 very-high-temperature, low-cost engine parts 

 for turbines, burners, etc. 



• A long-term program in artificial intelligence 

 has developed both theory and technology 

 now being applied to automating militarily 

 useful tasks. 



Recent projects still in the experimental stage 

 include: 



• A number of advanced memory technology 

 programs aimed at making possible very 

 cheap memories in the IQio to lOi'^ bit range 

 and the software techniques for accessing 

 them. 



• The rapid location of buried tunnels and oth- 

 er underground emplacements is of signifi- 

 cant military interest, and many location 

 techniques are being tested. 



Current and Future Research 

 Emphasis 



In the near future, priorities will be divided 

 between material sciences, emphasizing electronic 

 and electro-optical materials and techniques for 

 drastically reducing the cost of finished structural 

 components, and the area of information-pro- 

 cessing techniques, emphasizing those that are 

 applicable to the problems of command, control, 

 and communications technology. 



