Defense Advanced Research Projects AgencyNews

News

With more than 200 different programs across the spectrum of science and engineering, DARPA frequently has news to share. We regularly announce the launch of new programs, contract awards and—most exciting—compelling results from our ongoing research. We strive to report on our work and activities in language that can be understood and appreciated by the full range of individuals in military and civilian positions interested in our work—from technical experts with a need to know, to people who simply find our mission important and our accomplishments fascinating.

Feel free to search the list of web features below and visit DARPA on Facebook and Twitter. To learn more about DARPA news, visit the DARPA Public Affairs page. If you would like to use our news content, please follow our usage policy.

 

Subnets
11/30/2018

Breakthroughs Inspire Hope for Treating Intractable Mood Disorders

Four years ago, DARPA announced the start of a “journey of discovery” toward understanding and treating networks of the brain. The Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies (SUBNETS) program proposed to develop responsive, adaptable, closed-loop therapies for neuropsychiatric illness that incorporate recording and analysis of brain activity with near-real-time neural stimulation to correct or mitigate brain dysfunction. The premise of SUBNETS is that brain function and dysfunction — rather than being relegated to distinct anatomical regions of the brain — play out across distributed neural systems.
| Health | Med-Devices | Neuroscience | Therapy |

Squad X
11/30/2018

Squad X Improves Situational Awareness, Coordination for Dismounted Units

The first test of DARPA’s Squad X Experimentation program successfully demonstrated the ability to extend and enhance the situational awareness of small, dismounted units. In a weeklong test series at Twentynine Palms, California, U.S. Marine squads improved their ability to synchronize maneuvers, employing autonomous air and ground vehicles to detect threats from multiple domains – physical, electromagnetic, and cyber – providing critical intelligence as the squad moved through scenarios.
| Ground | Resilience | Sensors | Unmanned |

Panacea
11/28/2018

Reinventing Drug Discovery and Development for Military Needs

Flying at 50,000 feet, diving deep in the ocean, or hiking for miles with gear through extreme climates, military service members face conditions that place unique burdens on their individual physiology. The potential exists to develop pharmacological interventions to help service members complete their toughest missions more safely and efficiently, and then recover more quickly and without adverse effects, but those interventions must work on complex physiological systems in the human body.
| Bio-complexity | Health | Injury |

CODE
11/19/2018

CODE Demonstrates Autonomy and Collaboration with Minimal Human Commands

In a recent test series at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, DARPA’s Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program demonstrated the ability of CODE-equipped Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) to adapt and respond to unexpected threats in an anti-access area denial (A2AD) environment. The UASs efficiently shared information, cooperatively planned and allocated mission objectives, made coordinated tactical decisions, and collaboratively reacted to a dynamic, high-threat environment with minimal communication.
| Air | Autonomy | Unmanned |

2019 AI Colloquium
11/16/2018

DARPA Announces 2019 AI Colloquium

Throughout DARPA’s history, artificial intelligence (AI) has been an important area of groundbreaking research and development (R&D). In the 1960s, DARPA researchers completed some of the foundational work in the field, leading to the creation of expert systems, or the first wave of AI technologies. Since then, DARPA has funded developments in the second wave of AI – machine learning – which has significantly impacted defense and commercial capabilities in areas such as speech understanding, self-driving cars, and image recognition.
| AI | Algorithms | Cyber | Data | Interface | Opportunities | Tech-Foundations |

Operational Fires (OpFires)
11/9/2018

Program Targets Innovative Propulsion Solutions for Ground-Based Weapons Delivery System

The joint DARPA/U.S. Army Operational Fires (OpFires) program will soon kick off with three performers awarded contracts to begin work: Aerojet Rocketdyne, Exquadrum, and Sierra Nevada Corporation. OpFires aims to develop and demonstrate a novel ground-launched system enabling hypersonic boost glide weapons to penetrate modern enemy air defenses and rapidly and precisely engage critical time sensitive targets.
| Ground | Systems |

Launch Challenge
11/6/2018

DARPA Names Potential Sites for Launch Challenge, Eighteen Teams Prequalify

DARPA has narrowed the potential launch locations for the DARPA Launch Challenge to eight, with options for both vertical and horizontal launch. The challenge will culminate in late 2019 with two separate launches to low Earth orbit within weeks of each other from two different sites. Competitors will receive information about the final launch sites, payloads, and targeted orbit in the weeks prior to each launch.
| Access | Cost | Launch | Resilience | Space |

Photonics in the Package for Extreme Scalability (PIPES)
11/1/2018

Bringing Photonic Signaling to Digital Microelectronics

Parallelism – or the act of several processors simultaneously executing on an application or computation – has been increasingly embraced by the microelectronics industry as a way of sustaining demand for increased system performance. Today, parallel computing architectures have become pervasive across all application domains and system scales – from multicore processing units in consumer devices to high-performance computing in DoD systems.
| Electronics | Integration | Photonics |