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.

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12/10/2018

Bringing Advanced Microelectronics to Revolutionary Defense Applications

Today’s critical Department of Defense (DOD) systems and platforms rely on advanced electronics to address national security objectives. To help tackle obstacles facing a half-century of electronics advancement, DARPA launched the Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) – a five-year, upwards of $1.5 billion investment in the future of domestic electronic systems. In November, DARPA expanded ERI with the announcement of ERI Phase II, which seeks to further enmesh the technology needs and capabilities of the defense enterprise with the commercial and manufacturing realities of the electronics industry.

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.

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.

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 |

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 |

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.

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 |

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.

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 |

11/1/2018

DARPA Announces Next Phase of Electronics Resurgence Initiative

First announced in June 2017, DARPA’s Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) – a five-year, upwards of $1.5B investment in the future of domestic electronic systems – is rolling out the second phase of its research priorities. Comprised of several ongoing DARPA programs – including the six recently awarded ERI “Page 3” programs –ERI addresses long-foreseen obstacles to Moore’s Law and the challenges impeding 50 years of rapid progress in electronics advancement. The next phase of ERI will focus on further enmeshing the technology needs and capabilities of the defense enterprise with the commercial and manufacturing realities of the electronics industry.

10/29/2018

US Army Tests DARPA Autonomous Flight System, Pursuing Integration with Black Hawk

An S-76B commercial helicopter flew over a small crowd gathered at Fort Eustis, Virginia, landed in an adjacent field after adjusting to miss a vehicle, and rose up to hover perfectly motionless for several minutes. The mid-October demonstration was remarkable because the pilot carried out the maneuvers using supervised autonomy in an aircraft equipped with DARPA’s Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS). He operated the system via novel control interceptors and a tablet he had used for the first time just three days beforehand.

| Air | Autonomy | Unmanned |

10/12/2018

DARPA Seeks Proposals for Third OFFSET Swarm Sprint, Awards Contracts for Second

DARPA’s OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) envisions swarms of 250 collaborative autonomous systems providing critical insights to small ground military units in urban areas where vertical structures, tight spaces, and limited sight lines constrain communications and mobility. DARPA is soliciting proposals for its third swarm sprint, which will focus on the topics of human-swarm teaming and swarm tactics.

10/11/2018

Teaching Machines Common Sense Reasoning

Today’s machine learning systems are more advanced than ever, capable of automating increasingly complex tasks and serving as a critical tool for human operators. Despite recent advances, however, a critical component of Artificial Intelligence (AI) remains just out of reach – machine common sense. Defined as “the basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things that are shared by nearly all people and can be reasonably expected of nearly all people without need for debate,” common sense forms a critical foundation for how humans interact with the world around them.

10/4/2018

Discovering New Molecules for Military Applications

The efficient discovery and production of new molecules is essential for a range of military capabilities—from developing safe chemical warfare agent simulants and medicines to counter emerging threats, to coatings, dyes, and specialty fuels for advanced performance. Current approaches to develop molecules for specific applications, however, are intuition-driven, mired in slow iterative design and test cycles, and ultimately limited by the specific molecular expertise of the chemist who has to test each candidate molecule by hand.

9/26/2018

DARPA Selects Teams to Explore Underground Domain in Subterranean Challenge

The world beneath us leaves much to be discovered. These uncharted environments pose immense challenges to military and emergency personnel as they respond to threats from adversaries or natural disasters. DARPA has selected nine teams to compete in the Subterranean (SubT) Challenge – seven in the physical Systems track and two in the Virtual track – to develop new approaches to rapidly map, navigate, and search underground environments.

9/7/2018

DARPA Announces $2 Billion Campaign to Develop Next Wave of AI Technologies

Over its 60-year history, DARPA has played a leading role in the creation and advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that have produced game-changing capabilities for the Department of Defense. Starting in the 1960s, DARPA research shaped the first wave of AI technologies, which focused on handcrafted knowledge, or rule-based systems capable of narrowly defined tasks. While a critical step forward for the field, these systems were fragile and limited.

8/17/2018

Robotic Payload for RSGS Mission Moves to Next Phase of Development

DARPA has completed a major review milestone for its Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites, or RSGS, program. Results from a recently completed preliminary design review showed that the robotic payload design – coupled with a spacecraft bus that Space Systems Loral (SSL) is providing through a partnership agreement – is on track to fulfill a multi-year mission to service at least 20 commercial and government spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit (GEO).

| Robotics | Satellites | Space |

8/9/2018

Restoring Trust in Electronic Documents

Today, the expeditious delivery of electronic documents, messages, and other data is relied on for everything from communications to navigation. As the near instantaneous exchange of information has increased in volume, so has the variety of electronic data formats–from images and videos to text and maps. Verifying the trustworthiness and provenance of this mountain of electronic information is an exceedingly difficult task as individuals and organizations routinely engage with data shared by unauthenticated and potentially compromised sources.

| Cyber | Systems | Trust |

7/24/2018

DARPA Selects Teams to Unleash Power of Specialized, Reconfigurable Computing Hardware

The general-purpose computer has remained the dominant computing architecture for the last 50 years, driven largely by the relentless pace of Moore’s Law—the transistor-scaling that has allowed for a half-century of rapid progress in electronics. As this trajectory shows signs of slowing, however, it has become increasingly more challenging to achieve performance gains from generalized hardware, setting the stage for a resurgence in specialized architectures.

7/24/2018

Research Teams Selected to Lower Barriers to Modern System-on-Chip Design Announced

A once highly manual process, circuit design has been transformed by the advent of electronic design automation (EDA) tools and modular design methodologies. Despite continuing advances in automation technologies, the demand for increasingly complex System-on-Chip (SoC) platforms has shown no sign of slowing. Today’s SoCs incorporate billions of transistors with miles of electrical wiring that are integrated within a tiny chip.

7/24/2018

Research Teams Selected to Uncover Novel Materials and Approaches to Circuit Integration

The use of intellectual-property (IP) blocks–discrete, modular, reusable blocks that deliver frequently used circuit functions—has significantly streamlined the design and creation of microchips. Just as the number of transistors per chip has grown dramatically in line with Moore’s Law—the transistor scaling that has allowed for 50 years of electronics advancement–so too has the number of IP blocks on those same chips.

7/20/2018

DARPA Sets Date for Subterranean Challenge Competitors Day

DARPA will host a competitors day September 27, 2018, to communicate the vision and timeline of the DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge, engage potential competitors, and provide a space for technical and operational exchange.

7/20/2018

Accelerating the Exploration of Promising Artificial Intelligence Concepts

DARPA today announced its Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) program, a key component of the agency’s broader artificial intelligence (AI) investment strategy aimed at ensuring the United States maintains an advantage in this critical and rapidly accelerating technology area. AIE will constitute a series of unique funding opportunities that use streamlined contracting procedures and funding mechanisms to achieve a start date within three months of an opportunity announcement.

7/18/2018

Faster, Lighter, Smarter: DARPA Gives Small Autonomous Systems a Tech Boost

DARPA’s Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) program recently completed Phase 2 flight tests, demonstrating advanced algorithms designed to turn small air and ground systems into team members that could autonomously perform tasks dangerous for humans – such as pre-mission reconnaissance in a hostile urban setting or searching damaged structures for survivors following an earthquake.

| Air | Autonomy | Unmanned |

7/17/2018

Developing Microrobotics for Disaster Recovery and High-Risk Environments

Imagine a natural disaster scenario, such as an earthquake, that inflicts widespread damage to buildings and structures, critical utilities and infrastructure, and threatens human safety. Having the ability to navigate the rubble and enter highly unstable areas could prove invaluable to saving lives or detecting additional hazards among the wreckage. Partnering rescue personnel with robots to evaluate high-risk scenarios and environments can help increase the likelihood of successful search and recovery efforts, or other critical tasks while minimizing the threat to human teams.

| Microstructures | Resilience | SWAP |

7/17/2018

Seeking 72-hour Space Environment Forecasts with Updates on the Hour

Models for providing hourly terrestrial weather forecasts anywhere in the world have become increasingly precise—our smartphones buzz or chirp with local alerts of approaching thunderstorms, heavy snow, flash floods, and big events like tornados and hurricanes. The military relies on accurate weather forecasts for planning complex operations in the air, on ground, and at sea.

7/12/2018

Multiple Launches in Two Weeks: Maximizing Vehicle Payload

To maximize use of launch vehicle performance during its 2019 Launch Challenge, DARPA has released a request for information (RFI) seeking payload ideas from the space community. It is anticipated that Launch Challenge competitors will have a wide range of low Earth orbit (LEO) mass delivery capabilities, from roughly 10 to 500 kilograms.

7/11/2018

Reducing the Data Demands of Smart Machines

Machine learning (ML) systems today learn by example, ingesting tons of data that has been individually labeled by human analysts to generate a desired output. As these systems have progressed, deep neural networks (DNN) have emerged as the state of the art in ML models. DNN are capable of powering tasks like machine translation and speech or object recognition with a much higher degree of accuracy. However, training DNN requires massive amounts of labeled data–typically 10⁹ or 10¹⁰ training examples. The process of amassing and labeling this mountain of information is costly and time consuming.

7/10/2018

Experimental Spaceplane Program Successfully Completes Engine Test Series

DARPA’s Experimental Spaceplane (XSP) advances toward its goal for rapid turnaround and on-demand launch with the completion of a test series that put the spaceplane’s AR-22 Experimental Spaceplane Main Engine through a rigorous campaign. In the two weeks preceding the campaign, the engine ran twice to establish initial performance characteristics and turnaround processes. Then, starting July 26, the engineering team successfully fired the engine 10 times in just under 240 hours. All firings lasted at least 100 seconds. The AR-22 engine is a variant of the RS-25, also known as the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME).

6/26/2018

DARPA ERI Summit Expands to Include Workshops Regarding DARPA’s Future Electronics Investments

First announced in June 2017, DARPA’s Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) is a multi-year, upwards of $1.5 billion investment in jumpstarting innovation and collaboration across the U.S. electronics community to address an array of long foreseen challenges to Moore’s Law. To kickoff this community-wide effort, DARPA is hosting its first annual ERI Summit from July 23-25 in San Francisco, CA. The three-day event will bring together leading voices from across the electronics community–including Alphabet, Applied Materials, Intel, Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor Graphics, NVIDIA, and IBM–to address challenges and opportunities for the next half century of electronics progress.

6/22/2018

GXV-T Advances Radical Technology for Future Combat Vehicles

DARPA’s Ground X-Vehicle Technologies (GXV-T) program aims to improve mobility, survivability, safety, and effectiveness of future combat vehicles without piling on armor. Several Phase 2 contract awardees recently demonstrated advances on a variety of potentially groundbreaking technologies to meet the program’s goals.

6/19/2018

The Right Chemistry, Fast: Employing AI and Automation to Map Out and Make Molecules

Chemical innovation plays a key role in developing cutting-edge technologies for the military. Research chemists design and synthesize new molecules that could enable a slew of next-generation military products, such as novel propellants for spacecraft engines; new pharmaceuticals and medicines for troops in the field; lighter and longer-lasting batteries and fuel cells; advanced adhesives, coatings and paints; and less expensive explosives that are safer to handle. The problem, however, is that existing molecule design and production methods rely primarily on experts’ intuition in a laborious, trial-and-error research process.

5/25/2018

Dialing Up the Body’s Defenses Against Public Health and National Security Threats

Protection against many common pathogens and environmental stressors is written into our DNA. Our skin responds to sun exposure. Our immune system mounts defenses when we get the flu. Our bodies inherently work to mitigate the potential for harm caused by these health threats. However, these intrinsic responses are not always quick, robust, or appropriate enough to adequately defend us from harm, which is why many people experience sunburn after intense sun exposure or suffer severe symptoms, even death, following exposure to the flu.

5/25/2018

TTO Virtual Proposers Day Calls for New Ideas to Answer National Security Priorities

DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office is hosting a Virtual Proposers Day June 6 and 7 to provide information through pre-recorded videos about TTO’s goals and areas for investment in advance of a mid-June release of the 2018 Disruptive Capabilities for Future Warfare Broad Agency Announcement (BAA). The event also will provide an opportunity for companies and individuals to meet with TTO program managers to discuss concepts for advanced research, development, and demonstration of systems for military missions. Registration closes June 1 at noon EDT.

5/9/2018

Gremlins on Track for Demonstration Flights in 2019

DARPA is progressing toward its plan to demonstrate airborne launch and recovery of multiple unmanned aerial systems (UASs), targeted for late 2019. Now in its third and final phase, the goal for the Gremlins program is to develop a full-scale technology demonstration featuring the air recovery of multiple low-cost, reusable UASs, or “gremlins.”

5/3/2018

Researchers Selected to Develop Novel Approaches to Lifelong Machine Learning

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) systems have significantly advanced in recent years. However, they are currently limited to executing only those tasks they are specifically designed to perform and are unable to adapt when encountering situations outside their programming or training. DARPA’s Lifelong Learning Machines (L2M) program, drawing inspiration from biological systems, seeks to develop fundamentally new ML approaches that allow systems to adapt continually to new circumstances without forgetting previous learning.

| Adaptability | AI | Tech-Foundations |

4/25/2018

Achieving Unprecedented Frequency Control in Miniature Lasers

Only a few decades ago, finding a particular channel on the radio or television meant dialing a knob by hand, making small tweaks and adjustments to hone in on the right signal. Of course, we now take such fine tuning for granted, simply pressing a button to achieve the same effect. This convenience is enabled by radio frequency synthesis, the generation of accurate signal frequencies from a single reference oscillator.

4/18/2018

New DARPA Challenge Seeks Flexible and Responsive Launch Solutions

Today, DARPA announced the DARPA Launch Challenge, designed to promote rapid access to space within days, not years. Our nation’s space architecture is currently built around a limited number of exquisite systems with development times of up to 10 years. With the launch challenge, DARPA plans to accelerate capabilities and further incentivize industry to deliver launch solutions that are both flexible and responsive.

4/18/2018

Applying Computer-Human Collaboration to Accelerate Detection of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

Today, Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), Government off-the-shelf (GOTS), and Free and open-source (FOSS) software support nearly all aspects of DoD, military, and commercial operations. Securing this diverse technology base requires highly skilled hackers who reason about the functionality of software and identify novel vulnerabilities, using a suite of tools and techniques that require extensive training. While effective, the process is largely manual and requires hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of effort for each vulnerability discovered.

4/17/2018

DARPA Marks Its 60th Anniversary with "D60 Symposium"

On February 7, 1958, four months after the Soviet Union boosted the intensity of the Cold War by launching humanity’s first satellite, then Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy established the Advanced Research Projects Agency with this mandate: “to provide within the Department of Defense an agency for the direction and performance of certain advanced research and development projects.” In carrying out that open-ended mission for the past 60 years, the Agency has become widely known as a driver of technological developments that have girded national security (stealth, precision munitions, and unmanned aerial vehicles) and that sometimes have transformed daily civilian life (the internet, miniaturized GPS, and emerging fleets of driverless vehicles).

| Agency | History |

4/6/2018

DARPA Announces First Annual Electronics Resurgence Initiative Summit

The microelectronics community is facing an array of long foreseen obstacles to Moore’s Law, the transistor scaling that has allowed for 50 years of rapid progress in electronics. Current economic, geopolitical, and physics-based complications make the future of the electronics industry uniquely interesting at this moment. To jump-start innovation in the field, DARPA announced in June 2017 that it would coalesce a broad series of programs into the Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI).

3/30/2018

OFFSET “Sprinters” to Pursue State-of-the-art Solutions for Second Swarm Sprint

DARPA’s OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program envisions future small-unit infantry forces using small unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and/or small unmanned ground systems (UGSs) in swarms of 250 robots or more to accomplish diverse missions in complex urban environments. By leveraging and combining emerging technologies in swarm autonomy and human-swarm teaming, the program seeks to enable rapid development and deployment of breakthrough swarm capabilities.

3/28/2018

Progress in Quest to Develop a Human Memory Prosthesis

DARPA launched the Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program in November 2013 with the goal of developing a fully implantable, closed-loop neural interface capable of restoring normal memory function to military personnel suffering from the effects of brain injury or illness. Just over four years later, the program is returning remarkable results.

3/16/2018

Nonsurgical Neural Interfaces Could Significantly Expand Use of Neurotechnology

Over the past two decades, the international biomedical research community has demonstrated increasingly sophisticated ways to allow a person's brain to communicate with a device, allowing breakthroughs aimed at improving quality of life, such as access to computers and the internet, and more recently control of a prosthetic limb. DARPA has been at the forefront of this research.

| Communications | Interface | Neuroscience |

3/14/2018

Making Gray-Zone Activity more Black and White

An emergent type of conflict in recent years has been coined “gray zone,” because it sits in a nebulous area between peace and conventional warfare. Gray-zone action is not openly declared or defined, it’s slower, and is prosecuted more subtly—using social, psychological, religious, information, cyber and other means to achieve physical or cognitive objectives with or without violence. The lack of clarity of intent—the grayness—makes it challenging to detect, characterize, and counter an enemy fighting this way.

| AI |

3/1/2018

Slowing Biological Time to Extend the Golden Hour for Lifesaving Treatment

When a Service member suffers a traumatic injury or acute infection, the time from event to first medical treatment is usually the single most significant factor in determining the outcome between saving a life or not. First responders must act as quickly as possible, first to ensure a patient’s sheer survival and then to prevent permanent disability. The Department of Defense refers to this critical, initial window of time as the “golden hour,” but in many cases the opportunity to successfully intervene may extend much less than sixty minutes, which is why the military invests so heavily in moving casualties as rapidly as possible from the battlefield to suitable medical facilities.

| Chemistry | Health | Therapy |

2/22/2018

DARPA Names Researchers Working to Halt Outbreaks in 60 Days or Less

The increasing threat of infectious diseases is intensifying the need for breakthrough technologies and capabilities to protect first responders and equip them with therapeutics that can halt the impact of infectious agents. Current approaches for recent public health emergencies due to infectious diseases have not produced effective preventive or therapeutic solutions in a relevant timescale. Examples from recent outbreaks such as H3N2 (flu), Ebola, and Zika viruses highlight the significant lag in deployment and efficacy of life-saving solutions.

2/20/2018

DARPA Seeks to Expand Real-Time Radiological Threat Detection to Include Other Dangers

Advanced commercially available technologies—such as additive manufacturing (3-D printing), small-scale chemical reactors for pharmaceuticals, and CRISPR gene-manipulation tools—have opened wide access to scientific exploration and discovery. In the hands of terrorists and rogue nation states, however, these capabilities could be misused to concoct chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield explosive (CBRNE) weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in small quantities and in form factors that are hard to detect.

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Selected DARPA Achievements