The Sequester, DARPA, And A New Reality For U.S. Defense R&D

By Jim Pomager, Executive Editor

Sequestration, the automatic U.S. federal budget cuts that went into effect on March 1, was the dominant theme at SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing (DSS) 2013 in Baltimore last week, and its impact on the defense industry could be clearly seen and heard. With travel budgets slashed or eliminated altogether, many government employees couldn’t make the annual pilgrimage to the event, even those from as close by as Washington, DC. At one workshop I attended, attendees never even had the opportunity to lay eyes on the moderator (from the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Sensor Directorate) — he did his part via teleconference from Ohio.

Talk of sequestration was almost omnipresent during the week, starting with Monday’s plenary keynote address, “Driving Technological Surprise: An Enduring Mission in a Changing World”, delivered to a crowded ballroom by Arati Prabhakar, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In her talk, Prabhakar cited constrained budgets — both from the current sequester and from potential future economic pressures — as one of two major factors shaping the way DARPA will develop new capabilities in the context of what she called “today’s reality.”

The other key issue Prabhakar pointed out was the complex and shifting nature of the national security environment. Threats to U.S. security no longer come from a “single, monolithic, existential threat” (as they appeared to during the Cold War), but from many actors — nation states, terrorist and criminal organizations within and across nations, and even from individuals. These entities can put the United States in situations where it has limited options for response, and they have access both to the conventional means of waging war and to new kinds of tools, including electronic warfare (EW), cyber, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

In spite of these fiscal and threat uncertainties, which Prabhakar expects to continue well into the future, DARPA must press on in its mission and continue to achieve its historical objectives. DARPA’s mission is to create and prevent technological surprise by developing a new generation of technology. (The agency was established in 1958, in direct response to the Soviet Union’s “surprise” launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957.) Its three main objectives for achieving that mission, according to Prabhakar, are: 1) demonstrate breakthrough capabilities for national security, 2) catalyze a differentiated, highly capable U.S. technology base, and 3) keep DARPA robust and vibrant.

Objective #1: Demonstrate Breakthrough Capabilities For National Security
To achieve objective #1, Prabhakar suggested DARPA will leverage several approaches, namely:

1. Game-changing new systems technologies — Warfighters rely on a wide array of aging systems that could become vulnerable to enemy attack; DARPA will seek to create the next generation of systems to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated adversaries.
2. Layered, multi-technology warfighting concepts — With the complexity of modern warfighting, DARPA must integrate disparate technologies (i.e. coordinating across EW, manned and unmanned platforms, position/navigation/timing, and other systems) to rapidly advance capabilities.
3. Adaptable systems and solutions — We can’t predict how the battlefield of the future will shift and evolve, so DARPA must develop systems that can be quickly upgraded and modified in real-time to be successful in an ever-changing environment.
4. Innovation to invert the cost equation — The idea here is imposing greater costs on adversaries while simultaneously decreasing U.S.  costs, which will increase the deterrent factor.

She then went on to describe how DARPA is applying these approaches in current programs across different application areas, including:

• Space: The Phoenix program will harvest valuable components from “dead” communication satellites for reuse. Here’s a video showing how the technology could harvest an aperture from a retired satellite.
• Cyber: DARPA is working to replace today’s patch-and-pray method for cyber defense, in which an attacker has to find only one flaw, while the defender has to cover them all, with deeply integrated, randomized solutions. It will also look to make cyber offense an integral part of future warfare.
• Imaging: Prabhakar pointed out the High Altitude LIDAR Operational Experiment (HALOE) to take high-resolution 3D images of vast areas and terrains, and advances in night vision technology that will enable U.S. soldiers to continue to “own the night.”
• Positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT): DARPA is working to reduce U.S. dependence on GPS and expand its PNT capabilities, for instance by developing a resonator gyroscope that delivers navigation-grade performance in a much smaller form factor than current GPS systems.
• Robotics: DARPA is involved in the development of some wild robotic platforms that can execute complex tasks in even challenging environments. She showed us the M3 Cheetah, which can run faster than Usain Bolt (before crashing — see video). Perhaps even more impressive (and slightly unnerving) was the Legged Squad Support System, or LS3, a semi-autonomous robot that can follow a squad across rugged terrain carrying 400 lbs. of gear (see video below).

Objective #2: Catalyze A Differentiated, Highly Capable U.S. Technology Base
To achieve objective #1, Prabhakar said DARPA will need to galvanize the “technology base that lives beneath defense systems but is critical to enabling our future systems capabilities.” This will not only involve leveraging and transcending commercially available technologies, but also promoting the development of new capabilities — all part of what she referred to as “the virtuous cycle between defense needs and commercial opportunities.” One way DARPA will foster innovation is by seeking out opportunities for basic and interdisciplinary research across universities, government labs, and private R&D organizations. Another is by investing in and building “foundational technology infrastructure and communities” in a wide range of application areas. Examples Prabhakar shared included:

• The Diverse Accessible Heterogeneous Integration (DAHI) program is working on intimate, device-level heterogeneous integration of emerging materials and devices (e.g. microelectromechanical systems/MEMS) with silicon complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology on a common silicon substrate.
• Nexus 7 looks across enormous amounts of collected data to provide population-specific cultural intelligence in support of warfighter stability assessments for Afghan provinces.
• Also on the Big Data front, the XDATA program seeks to develop techniques and tools to process and analyze vast and heterogeneous mission-oriented information generated by military sensors and communications systems.
• In the field of cell biology, DARPA is fostering the concept of “living foundries” for the custom, distributed, on-demand manufacturing of desired materials — molecules (e.g. chemicals, advanced fuels, pharmaceuticals, etc.), complex materials (polymers, catalysts, functional materials), and systems (multi-cellular constructs, self-repairing systems, programmable systems).
• Under the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, DARPA is facilitating the development of prosthetic limbs to help restore function to wounded veterans (and others). Prabhakar shared an astonishing 60 Minutes video of a quadriplegic woman directly controlling a prosthetic arm using only her thoughts (see video below).

Objective #3: Keep DARPA Robust And Vibrant
Prabhakar closed by discussing what DARPA needs to do to continue its success into this new era. It must find and recruit program managers who have technology leadership, an adventurous spirit, and the conviction and drive to change the world. Those program managers must remain actively engaged with the technological community — small and large companies, universities, labs, and military services and agencies. This will allow DARPA to continue to build its unique culture that focuses on doing the work that leads to huge impact, being willing to tolerate the associated risks, and relishing the privilege of public service.

“If we do our job and you work with us toward our end objectives, all of us are going to get to be part of doing something that I think we will all be very, very proud of,” she said “because before us is the opportunity to create a whole new generation of technologies for national security that over time will give our future leaders the options that they need — really powerful options — for whatever comes down the pike.”