Posted on 05/24/2002 8:09:04 PM PDT by LarryLied
Excerpts from :
A Compendium of DARPA Programs
DARPA’s charter is to prevent technological surprise from harming U.S. national security by sponsoring revolutionary and innovative high-payoff research. This document provides short summaries of selected DARPA programs in FY 2002 and FY 2003, and it is intended as a ready reference for those interested in DARPA’s research portfolio.
The Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery (EELD) program is developing technologies and tools for automated discovery, extraction, and linking of sparse evidence contained in large amounts of classified and unclassified data sources.
The Translingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization (TIDES) program is creating technology to enable English speakers to locate and interpret critical information in multiple languages without requiring knowledge of those languages.
The Human Identification at a Distance (HumanID) program is developing automated biometric identification technologies to detect, recognize, and identify humans at great distances.
The Cyber Panel program is developing technologies for monitoring the DoD’s critical networked information systems for signs of sophisticated and coordinated cyber attacks and responding to avert them or defend against them.
The purpose of the Organic Air Vehicle (OAV) program is to provide ground combat units, including Future Combat Systems unit cells, with a capability to detect adversary troops concealed in forests or behind buildings or hills, i.e., anywhere that U.S. forces do not have a direct line-of-sight to the hostile force.
The High Power Fiber Lasers program will develop and demonstrate single-mode fiber lasers with output powers of nearly one kilowatt from a single aperture.
The Friction Drag Reduction program, which is ending in FY 2002, is developing a sound theoretical understanding of the physical principles and mechanisms for reducing the frictional drag on ships’ hulls by 30 percent as they move through the water.
The Network Modeling and Simulation program will develop tools to predict the performance and vulnerabilities of complex networks, such as the Internet and highly dynamic military networks.
The Augmented Cognition (AugCog) program will extend, by an order-of-magnitude or more, the information management capacity of the “human-computer” combination by developing and demonstrating enhancements to human cognitive ability in diverse and stressful operational environments.
The DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) project is creating technologies that enable software agents to identify, communicate with, and understand other software agents dynamically in a web-enabled environment.
The goal of the Bio:Info:Micro program is to develop novel devices and computational tools to develop new information for controlling and exploiting biological systems at the molecular and cellular level in ways that will ultimately be used to protect the warfighter and enhance human performance for carrying out military operations.
The goal of the Biological Input/Output Systems program is to demonstrate specific, measurable state changes (e.g., color) in plants and microbes in response to chemicals of interest to DoD (e.g., biological warfare and chemical warfare agents, fuels, explosives, and chemical precursors).
The Engineered Bio-Molecular Nano-Devices/Systems program will develop platform technologies to enable the creation of hybrid (organic-inorganic) nano-scale devices/systems for optical/infrared sensing, high-speed molecular sensing/readout, and bio-computing.
The Bio-Computation program is exploring and developing computational methods and models at the bio-molecular and cellular levels for a variety of DoD and national security applications.
The Brain Machine Interface program will explore the creation of new technologies for augmenting human performance through the ability to access codes in the brain in real-time and integrate them into peripheral device or system operations.
The Controlled Biological and Biomimetic Systems program leverages the extraordinary capabilities of biological systems for military and dual-use applications.
The primary goal of the Biomolecular Motors program is to develop an understanding of the fundamental operating principles of biomolecular motors and exploit this knowledge to harvest, modify and integrate these macromolecular assemblies into useful devices from the nano- to macro-scale.
The Continuous Assisted Performance program is developing a range of different approaches to extend the capabilities of soldiers to perform their duties for up to seven days in the absence of sleep. This program is beginning in FY 2002, with a portfolio of efforts that include magnetic brain stimulation, understanding individual differences in resistance to sleep deprivation, effects of exercise and diet on resistance to sleep deprivation, and the discovery of novel pharmacologic approaches.
The Bio-Magnetic Interfacing Concepts program will explore and demonstrate the utility of nanoscale magnetics as a portable, robust, and highly sensitive transduction mechanism for monitoring and controlling biological activity at the cellular and, ultimately, single molecule level.
The objective of the Analog Optical Signal Processing program is to significantly enhance the performance of, and enable entirely new capabilities and architectures for tactical and strategic radio frequency systems by expanding the dynamic range-bandwidth and time-bandwidth limits by a factor of 1000 through the introduction of analog optical signal processing components into the system front-ends.
The VLSI Photonics program, completed in FY 2001, has been developing photonics technology to use optical links instead of electronic wire links for chip-to-chip and board-to-board communications. This new technology will allow data transfer rates faster than a terabit per second.
The goal of the Semiconductor Ultraviolet Optical Sources program is to develop wide band gap materials for optical emission in the ultraviolet for bio-sensing and covert communications applications.
The objective of the Three-Dimensional Imaging program is to develop focal plane sensor devices to capture three-dimensional images of a target with a single short laser pulse. The requirement to image from quickly moving platforms and to rapidly engage multiple targets necessitates single flash systems. These devices, with a single 10 nanosecond flash of laser illumination, record both target intensity and target depth information.
The Molecular-level, Large-area Printing (MLP) program investigated novel processes for the inexpensive fabrication of thin-film structures with nanometer dimensions on arbitrarily shaped surfaces. As an example application, the weight and complexity of an imaging system is significantly reduced if a curved, rather than flat, focal surface detector array is incorporated. In FY 2001, the program completed, demonstrated, and characterized a 200-by-200 pixel density array on a spherical surface. Molecular-level, Large-area Printing tooling is now being pursued by at least two start-ups which have licensed technology developed under this program.
The Distributed Robotics program is developing micro-robots that work together in groups in dynamically changing environments. The program consists of contractors developing enabling technologies, as well as individual robots and groups of robots. The small robots will be approximately five centimeters (two inches), or smaller, in any single dimension. They will work cooperatively together in groups of five to 10 robots and be capable of different modes of locomotion (e.g., land, water, and vertical climbing) and will adapt their behavior based on remote user inputs or onboard sensors.
The objective of the Chip Scale Atomic Clock program is to demonstrate a low-power chip-scale atomic-resonance-based time-reference unit with stability better than one part per billion in one second, which is 10,000 times better than the best quartz-crystal clocks. The ultimate size of the Chip Scale Atomic Clock, within one cubic centimeter, is at least 200 times smaller than the smallest atomic reference unit.
The goal of the Lightweight Body Armor program is to significantly reduce the weight of soldier body armor designed to stop 30-caliber armor-piercing bullets to an aereal density of 3.5 pounds per square foot. Three ultra-lightweight body armor concepts, two of which use active armor techniques, are supported by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Systems Manager-Soldier.
The objective of the Mesoscopic Integrated Conformal Electronics (MICE) program is to be able to create electronic circuits and materials on any surface, e.g., to print electrical circuits on the frames of eyeglasses or interwoven with clothing.
The Piezoelectric Single Crystals (PiezoCrystals) program exploits the discovery of a class of materials that provide a revolutionary improvement in converting an electrical signal into a mechanical motion. These rock-hard materials are able to change their shape under electric stimulus over 10 times more than conventional materials.
The Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation program is developing technologies to enhance a soldier’s physical performance to enable him, for example, to handle more firepower, wear more ballistic protection, carry larger caliber weapons and more ammunition, and carry supplies greater distances.
The overall goal of the new Morphing Aircraft Structures program is to create and advance enabling technologies for – and, ultimately, design, build, and demonstrate – a seamless, aerodynamically efficient, air vehicle capable of radical shape change.
The Water Harvesting program will include approaches to harvest water from any available source to eliminate 50% of water logistics requirements for two to 10,000 warfighters – anywhere, anytime. Specifically, the program will develop technologies that will generate 3.5 quarts per day per soldier for two to 12 warfighters from apparently nonexistent sources (e.g., water from air, fuel, or mud) as well technologies to purify/desalinate 3.5 quarts per day per soldier for two to 10,000 warfighters from conventional sources (e.g., puddles, ponds, rivers, or the sea).
The goal of the Spins In Semiconductors program is to change the paradigm of electronics from electron charge to electron spin. This can have profound impact on the performance (speed and power dissipation) of memory and logic for computation and for optoelectronics for communications.
Link at top (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has the fullest description of the programs.
Philip K. Dick predicted this in the 1950's. His minature robots had artillery.
I attended a defense related event this morning. Between scheduled events I mingled with the attendees.
A senior official for a major defense contractor made the following, off the cuff, statement to a small group around the lobby coffee pot:
"A few years ago we used to compete for contracts let by the DOD. Today we find out who's got the money and then submit our creative ideas to meet their rumored needs. Today DARPA has got the money."
(hint?)
We are light-years ahead of the ragheads, and the distance is increasing exponentially.
I know...lol. The page this comes from is enormous and there is lots more. Only picked out the ones with links (and the ones I had half an idea what the heck they are talking about).
Did you see the landmines which communicate with each other and move as the battlefield situation requires?
Good move by the DOD to make DARPA information available. Must really demoralize our adversaries. It we are willing to share this information, they must be terrified by the idea of what we don't make public.
Bring on the BattleMechs
You bet. Todays' hot topics were the rumored DARPA need for autonomus transportation platforms for individual troops. Sort of like rocketman or a souped up Alice. I guess the experience gained in Operation Anaconda proved a need to supply individual ground troops with supplemental mobility devices for sustained, high altitude, combat patrols.
Maybe they'll have turbocharged, silenced, Honda Trail 90's on their next outing into the Hindu Kush.
Small companies retain the intellectual property rights to technologies they develop under these programs.
Next they will be handing out Letters of Marquis.This is great. Unleash American know how and its over before it begins for our enemies.
Advances like these are often missed by mainstream science fiction writers. Asimov's robot series may be the best. His psycho-history is in the ballpark with some of this stuff.
And the "futurists" often miss the big breakthroughs. I have Alvin Toffler's 1975 book "Future Facts": 300 pages of gizmo's, but he totally missed the personal computer as we know it... and it came just years after his book.
A big note about all the DARPA work. If the technology gets exported to the asian mainland we will have to face it later in an adversarial way.
The exit valve of the conveyor tube was concealed in a tangle of vines and ruins a quarter of a mile beyond the factory. In a slot of rock at the base of the mountains the valve poked up like a nozzle. From ten yards away, it was invisible; the two men were almost on top of it before they noticed it.Every few moments, a pellet burst from the valve and shot up into the sky. The nozzle revolved and altered its angle of defection; each pellet was launched in a slightly varied trajectory.
"How far are they going?" Morrison wondered.
"Probably varies. It's distributing them at random." O'Neill advanced cautiously, but the mechanism took no notice of him. Plastered against the towering wall of rock was a crumpled pellet; by accident, the nozzle had released it directly at the mountainside. O'Neill climbed up, got it and jumped down.
The pellet was a smashed container of machinery, tiny metallic elements too minute to be analyzed without a microscope.
"Not a weapon," O'Neill said.
The cylinder had split. At first he couldn't tell if it had been the impact or deliberate internal mechanisms at work. From the rent, an ooze of metal bits was sliding. Squatting down, O'Neill examined them.
The bits were in motion. Microscopic machinery, smaller than ants, smaller than pins, working energetically, purposefully - constructing something that looked like a tiny rectangle of steel.
"They're building," O'Neill said, awed. He got up and prowled on. Off to the side, at the far edge of the gully, he came across a downed pellet far advanced on its construction. Apparently it had been released some time ago.
This one had made great enough progress to be identified. Minute as it was, the structure was familiar. The machinery was building a miniature replica of the demolished factory.
"Well," O'Neill said thoughtfully, "we're back where we started from. For better or worse ... I don't know."
"I guess they must be all over Earth by now," Morrison said, "landing everywhere and going to work."
A thought struck O'Neill. "Maybe some of them are geared for escape velocity. That would be neat - autofac networks throughout the whole universe."
Behind him, the nozzle continued to spurt out its torrent of metal seeds.
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