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From Program Information:

The Resilient Anonymous Communication for Everyone (RACE) program will research technologies for a distributed messaging system that can: a) exist completely within a given network, b) provide confidentiality, integrity, and availability of messaging, and c) preserve privacy to any participant in the system. Compromised system data and associated networked communications should not be helpful for compromising any additional parts of the system. RACE advances will be based on rigorous security arguments, such as those found in the academic cryptography community or statistical arguments based on realistic simulations. RACE will seek to create advances in communication protocol encapsulation methods as well as efficient, oblivious, distributed system tasking to build a system that is resistant to attack, even with limited participant compromises and largescale, real-time deep packet inspection. The program will further seek to explore approaches to preserving privacy, such as secure multiparty computation and obfuscated communication protocols.

The goal of the RACE program is to create a system capable of avoiding large-scale compromise. As such, RACE research efforts will explore: 1) preventing compromised information from being useful for identifying any of the system nodes because all such information is encrypted on the nodes at all times, even during computation; and 2) preventing communications compromise by virtue of obfuscating communication protocols.

Yeah, scary shit
https://www.darpa.mil/program/...
https://www.nature.com/article...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://www.theguardian.com/sc...

Just go to the source.

newatlas sucks - if you run an adblocker, it won't let you access any of their stories.

http://www.darpa.mil/news-even...

Why bother innovating when consumers will gladly buy up the latest respin of your dated architecture with a minimal bump in performance for a given price? Few organizations have the deep pockets to fund such endeavors without incurring the wrath of greedy shareholders. If you want to know what the future will look like then you might do well to look to those who will fund it.

DARPA is working on this in the MUSE program. Here is one of the performers: http://pliny.rice.edu/index.ht....

Much of the code that you need has already been written, and you just have to find it. So, have a system read in github, figure out what each of the pieces of software do, take the best parts and stitch them together into the program that you need. A great deal of 'computer science' has devolved into looking in stack overflow for what you need and copying and pasting into your program. Just automate that. (Some assembly required, your mileage may vary)

Don't the marines use helicopters and Harriers for this role?

The Corps has 6 squadrons of Harriers.....and *13* squadrons of F-18s. So 2/3rds of our fixed wing assets are multi-role strike fighters flying from Navy carriers.

A F-35 can't fly slow and can't take nearly as much damage as the A-10 can and keep going - this is a byproduct of how it was designed to fulfill several roles and the compromises this involves. The aircraft is vulnerable to light arms fire, runs a single, big engine which is easy to damage, can carry very limited ordinance due to its internal bay arrangement and can load only 220 rounds of 25mm ammo.

All of those things are true, however...

By any measure it is a poor, poor CAS platform.

CAS is not a set of platform specs. It is an operational concept. A B-52 dropping JDAMS danger close to an infantry company is a CAS platform. Trends in digital CAS (submitting and prosecuting air support requests with digital data instead of voice radio and hand-written notes) + precision munitions = a reduced requirement for direct observation by the pilot's Mk. I Eyeball. Which also means you don't need an aircraft flying low, slow, and relying on its armor and gun runs. Improved targeting and marking equipment, both with ground personnel and on aviation platforms, facilitates accurate, higher-altitude delivery of munitions. DARPA and the Marine Corps understand this: http://www.darpa.mil/news-even...

There's a lot of reasons why I think the F-35 is a shitty overall acquisition, but an F-35B with an internal load of Small Diameter Bombs (once they make them actually fit inside the bomb bays), flying fast and stealthy (can't assume we'll have air dominance in the future) to put ordnance precisely on target, in support of an accurate digital air support request....yeah, that's probably the only thing the aircraft will ever get right. Eventually. Still won't be cost-effective though.

Nothing has ever proposed to do what the A-10 can do. The F-35 was just supposed to get sufficiently similar results. Just not doing so flying so low and slow that the pilots can recognize individual targets, ensuring fire solely on the enemy.

The A-10 was purpose-designed for engaging hordes of Soviet tanks in Europe, and they were expected to take horrendous losses in the process (well, everything was if the Cold War went hot). With the proliferation of precision-guided munitions, close air support has evolved, and it has to given the tech advances in air-defense systems. Even A-10s are rarely prosecuting missions with low and slow gun runs. I have a thread I've bookmarked on F-16.net with amplifying information but I'm not at home to pull up the link for you.

So cal in one too close, you are dead. Call in your own coordinates, not the enemy, and you are dead (yes, it's happened). But such errors with an A-10 are often less, as the A-10 pilot is low enough and slow enough to be able to visually verify a target. The tactics of the ground troop have adapted to the A-10.

These problems with poorly-targeted air support requests are being addressed with the growth of digital close air support technology: http://www.darpa.mil/program/p... If anything, CAS tactics have adapted to PGMs, not to the A-10 platform. Something like 80% of CAS missions are flown by F-16s dropping PGMs.

With explosives-based air support from an aircraft outside visual range, you call in coordinates of the enemy, and bomb them from afar. This reduces the kills, includes more civilians, and is generally worse than the tactics used with an A-10 nearby.

Citation needed. Seriously, if you have a scholarly article with data to support this assertion I want to read it, for some of my own related research.

Marine corps wanted a plane for infantry support. A new A-10.

So, the A-35 can be a "fighter" as they say, but can it really do the work A-10 is doing?

In the "balloon goes up" exercises/scenarios that we use to train our forces in the Pacific, the Air Tasking Orders almost never feature A-10s in support of the Marine MAGTF. Our fixed-wing close air support is almost always AV-8Bs or F/A-18C/Ds, with the occasional Navy Super Hornet. We process dozens of immediate Joint Tactical Air Requests daily during the major phases of ground combat (not to mention any pre-planned targets), and we do it without ever having access to sections of A-10s. Part of the reason we are able to do this is because our aviators are heavily trained for CAS, and everyone is taught on the same tactics/techniques/procedures for smooth integration of fires. USAF aviators are primarily A2A guys and they don't speak the same language as the Army troops they are supposed to support.

That said, the F-35 can't carry much internal ordnance, and currently can't fit the *Small Diameter* Bomb in its weapon bays. For the money that we are spending, I don't think we are getting a good value at all. I think the USAF and USN should have shared a multirole design, basically a stealthy F-18. The Corps should have procured its own VTOL jet. After reading on WarIsBoring how the VTOL jet concept has never Worked As Designed (launching from austere airfields after the Navy flattops depart), I'm honestly wondering if we should adopt a compound helicopter and eliminate the Corps' fixed-wing CAS platforms entirely. A Compound Heli would have the speed and range necessary to escort Ospreys (AH-1s can't keep up), but we can operate them from LHAs/LHDs/LPDs easily, and carry more birds too.

Can it give actual close air support to troops on ground? Loiter over enemy positions, firing armor piercing ammo to tanks and APC-s?

Why do so many people on the Internet associate CAS with slow-turning gun runs? Must be the pro-A-10 PR that has burned this image in people's minds. Close = "must coordinate with the ground commander to avoid killing friendlies". That's it. Some people will argue that dropping bombs from fast jets, accurately, isn't always an option. This is largely because our air-ground communications assets/methods are woefully archaic. It's why DARPA, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps are pushing such rapid progress on PCAS: http://www.darpa.mil/program/p...

What good the 4 internally carried missiles are doing in that situation?

You never know when you might encounter "leakers", enemy aircraft that have slipped past the Combat Air Patrol. ALL fighters carry some kind of ordnance for emergency self-defense.

So, there are already computers that can automatically find vulnerabilities and patch them (and exploit them).

https://cgc.darpa.mil/
http://www.cybergrandchallenge...

Graphene in addition to the engineering challenges does have some very fundamental scientific challenges as well.

The most important challenge is its lack of a bandgap meaning that graphene transistors cannot be turned off. That drawback means that while it may have a ~500GHz cutoff frequency on par with silicon and below the InP records it will not modulate current in an energy-efficient way, and while it can create some forms of logic the lack of a bandgap limits its power amplifying frequency to a measly 50GHz, well below the competing technologies. Contrast that with Northrop Grumman's recent 1000GHz amplifier, which is admittedly not a great amplifier since it is run very near its cutoff frequency it has 1dB or less gain per stage, but it works which is still quite impressive.

So far the various methods that can give graphene a bandgap also take away the extremely fast electron transport properties that made graphene so interesting for electronics in the first place. Some of us working on competing technologies wonder why hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on graphene transistor development without solving the fundamental bandgap problem - of course we just want that money directed to our own research, but some of us try to be realistic about the capabilities of what we are developing ;-)

I'm sure graphene will be useful for some things but so far there are still some fundamental problems that need to be solved before using it for high-speed electronics for wireless applications or digital logic. We'll see how it does.

From the DARPA Urban Challenge web site.

A final test on the NQE B course required the robots to find an assigned parking spot between adjacent parked cars

Parking between two vehicles is not deciphering the lines on pavement and parking appropriately. It is using the vehicles to mark where to park.

Parking and Grand Challenge are two unrelated arguments, sorry if I've not been clear enough. He said "none of the winning technology was even close to commercially viable", I pointed out that the Google Car is a direct result of the Stanford effort in the DARPA Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge, so the direction is exactly that one. Forward parking BTW it's a solved problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

From the DARPA Urban Challenge web site.

A final test on the NQE B course required the robots to find an assigned parking spot between adjacent parked cars

Parking between two vehicles is not deciphering the lines on pavement and parking appropriately. It is using the vehicles to mark where to park.

if the DARPA challenge can get autonomous vehicles to move effectively around an urban zone, what makes you think an accident is all that complex?

http://archive.darpa.mil/grand...

This was 7 years ago, done by groups on relatively low budgets. Where do you think the tech has gone since then?

TFA contains links to Wired articles. Couldn't find a link to a NASA catalogue so TFA is a 'heads up' of what is to come, yes?

Here's the link to the DARPA catalogue: http://www.darpa.mil/OpenCatal...

We've already seen some of the incredible Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency droids that have come out of that shop, and one can only imagine what designs might be classified and unknown to the public.

There's the humanoid robot, Atlas.
The RC car with a secret, the SandFlea.
There's the robot that runs faster than any man, Cheetah.
The packmule that can't be tipped over, Big Dog.
And the frightening combination of tech, the robot that runs fast on ANY terrain, WildCat.

It will be interesting to see what Google does with their droids. Their robot shop is being headed by the guy that made Android the most popular smartphone OS, Andy Rubin. He tweeted a link to the New York Times story yesterday, along with the comment, "The future is looking awesome!" Rubin was a robotics engineer for Apple, and the lens company, Carl Zeiss, before starting with Google.

Regardless of your feelings about droids, I think we're going to see huge advances in robotics now that Google is jumping in with both feet.

If only there were some sort of public sector approach to the same initiative. Wherever would you find it?

https://gifttutoring.org/ [gifttutoring.org]
http://www.adlnet.org/ [adlnet.org]
http://learningregistry.org/ [learningregistry.org]
http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/DSO/Programs/Education_Dominance.aspx [darpa.mil]
http://www.tutor.com/military/eligibility [tutor.com]
http://www.learnlab.org/ [learnlab.org]

And if only some research laboratories were working on the problem... Like Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia Teacher's College, the University of Memphis, the University of Central Florida, and others...

If only there were some sort of public sector approach to the same initiative. Wherever would you find it?

https://gifttutoring.org/
http://www.adlnet.org/
http://learningregistry.org/
http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/DSO/Programs/Education_Dominance.aspx
http://www.tutor.com/military/eligibility
http://www.learnlab.org/

And if only some research laboratories were working on the problem... Like Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia Teacher's College, the University of Memphis, the University of Central Florida, and others...

Research Development Evaluation and Test part of the Department of Defense portion of the president's budget. The budget is available at http://www.darpa.mil/newsevents/budget.aspx.

For those in the acronym game: President's DoD RDT&E funding, cross-service.

This capability has been implemented for years. The DARPA Grand Challenge has had many capable entrants, including (I believe) CMU. All of the described behavior was required years ago in the Grand Challenge.

See DARPA Urban Challege 2007:

http://archive.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/

To even qualify:
 

National Qualification Event

The NQE for the Urban Challenge was divided into three separate test areas, each with its own flavor and set of challenges:

The NQE A test course required robots to safely merge into and out of two-way traffic in a tight, circulating course. Needless to say, this led to some hair-raising moments for some of the traffic drivers. Besides the complex timing and scoring being recorded by course officials, traffic drivers would alert officials to aggressive behavior with an ever-popular horn blast. Amazingly, in eight days of testing, only one traffic vehicle was actually struck by a robotic vehicle, a testament to the progress of the teams and DARPAâ(TM)s focus on safety.

The meandering NQE B course tested robots on their ability to stay within a lane as they traversed this 2.8-mile course. One section, affectionately termed âoeThe Gauntletâ required the robots to delicately maneuver through a series of parallel parked cars and road obstacles. A final test on the NQE B course required the robots to find an assigned parking spot between adjacent parked cars, then safely pull into and back out of the spot before proceeding on its mission.

NQE C was traffic intensive, consisting of a series of four-way stop intersections for the robot to negotiate, each with its own arrangement of traffic. Robots had to recognize the other vehicles at these intersections, determine the order of precedence and then safely proceed through the intersection when it was their turn. For the second half of the NQE C course, various road blocks were emplaced and the robots were tested on their ability to recognize the road block, execute a U-turn and dynamically replan a new route to complete their mission.

The US government certainly is.

http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/MTO/Programs/Trusted_Integrated_Circuits_(TRUST).aspx

Every wonder why National Semiconductor (now TI I guess) runs a FAB at Fort Meade?

http://www.trustedfoundryprogram.org/

Linked articles not very informative...one of the many SoCs available, I suppose. A little more info here, but not much.

http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2013/05/29.aspx

Not sure why they need the Android layer; what does that bring above the many distros already available? (Thinking of things like Pi, Arduino...)

What next, DARPA play store?

BTW, for those of you wondering, ODM=Original Design Manufacturers...

if you read James Bamford's books, you will begin to realize that most of the major US computer companies, from Cray to IBM, were propped up directly and secretly by the NSA to build supercomputers for it, secretly, years before the technology would reach the public.

I don't need a book to know the government funds technology improvements; They freely admit it. It's not exactly super spy secret stuff -- they created the internet. It's a safe bet that they continue to work on similar things.

First, it is great that someone actually looked up the specific language. But after reading it, I am less worried than I was by just reading the summary. I partially agree with your analysis on the first paragraph. But it is not merely babble. If you read it from the point of view of a limited-government conservative, who believes in an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, it is very important to tie the work of the NSF (or any part of government) back to justice, domestic tranquility, common defence, or general welfare. Therefore it is not merely vacuous - it is an important argument against the ~50% people who vote Republican and by pure chance will win ever other election (or so). In a democracy, it is best to convince your opponents rather than rely on out-voting them every single time, even if that means that you only get half a loaf.

Fortunately, you are right that it is broad enough to drive a truck through. But that is no mere accident; basic research, even from a Republican perspective, is often an OK government expenditure if it is argued carefully and respectfully, and the spending is carefully tailored so as not to be wasteful. And that is the real point of this - not to deny funding to science, but rather to prove conservative bona fides and push conservative priorities in science. Will that mean fewer grants to climate science? Probably. But maybe more funding to DARPA battery research. In two or four years, the hands controlling the purse-strings will probably change, and priorities of the NSF will change as well, so it's tough to get too worked up about it. I would be more worried if the Republicans just said that they are cutting off funding to the NSF rather than saying, as they are, we are going to defund X and fund more Y.

And honestly, if you were to ask me personally whether we need YACCS (Yet Another Climate Change Study) or a new DARPA challenge, I would rather have cool new robots!

Dogfighting with guns in order to down aircraft might come back in vogue once lasers that can target and eliminate surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles are proven effective in a real combat scenario. Right now they're in the early test phase with wing-mount pods that are supposedly able to do this and give bombers and fighter jets the ability to operate with near-impunity from missile threats.

And a relevant link to a page describing it, in case anyone is interested.
http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/STO/Programs/High_Energy_Liquid_Laser_Area_Defense_System_%28HELLADS%29.aspx

We've heard this before from the top-down AI crowd. I went through Stanford CS in the 1980s when that crowd was running things, so I got the full pitch. The Cyc project is, amazingly, still going on after 29 years. The classic disease of the academic AI community was acting like strong AI was just one good idea away. It's harder than that.

On the other hand, it's quite likely that Google can come up with something that answers a large fraction of the questions people want to ask Google. Especially if they don't actually have to answer them, just display reasonably relevant information. They'll probably get a usable Siri/Wolfram Alpha competitor.

The long slog to AI up from the bottom is going reasonably well. We're through the "AI Winter". Optical character recognition works quite well. Face recognition works. Automatic driving works. (DARPA Grand Challenge) Legged locomotion works. (BigDog). This is real progress over a decade ago.

Scene understanding and manipulation in uncontrolled environments, not so much. Willow Garage has towel-folding working, and can now match and fold socks. The DARPA ARM program is making progress very slowly. Watch their videos to see really good robot hardware struggling to slowly perform very simple manipulation tasks. DARPA is funding the DARPA Humanoid Challenge to kick some academic ass on this. (The DARPA challenges have a carrot and a stick component. The prizes get the attention, but what motivates major schools to devote massive efforts to these projects are threats of a funding cutoff if they can't get results. Since DARPA started doing this under Tony Tether, there's been a lot more progress.)

Slowly, the list of tasks robots can do increases. More rapidly, the cost of the hardware decreases, which means more commercial applications. The Age of Robots isn't here yet, but it's coming. Not all that fast. Robots haven't reached the level of even the original Apple II in utility and acceptance. Right now, I think we're at the level of the early military computer systems, approaching the SAGE prototype stage. (SAGE was an 1950s air defense system. It had real time computers, data communication links, interactive graphics, light guns, and control of remote hardware. The SAGE prototype was the first system to have all that. Now, everybody has all that on their phone. It took half a century to get here from there.)

Re: The actual DARPA page, with rules/etc., is here.
.
Except for the fact that right now (~1pm PST 2012-12-22) that page has grayed out tabs for
1 -- Rules
2 -- Register
3 -- Q&A
;>)
The only tab that is live currently is the "Home" tab at that direct link http://www.darpa.mil/spectrumchallenge/. I don't think the other tabs go live until January 2013, so the rules and such are not available yet.

The goal is to "engineer software-based radios that transmit data faster than a competitor using identical hardware".

The goal isn't to develop fancy new hardware, or to use an overwhelming amount of power. The goal is to develop fancy new software.

With frequency-hopping and time-hopping techniques, if you can intelligently adapt to the local interference, and transmit in the time and frequency gaps where the interference doesn't occur, then you can transmit more data for the same amount of power. That's the goal.

The actual DARPA page, with rules/etc., is here.

The goal is to create a 100 Gb/s data link that achieves a range greater than 200 kilometers between airborne assets and a range greater than 100 kilometers between an airborne asset (at 60,000 feet) and the ground.

This is actually a DARPA help wanted ad. And from description of the project sounds like a good job opportunity for some slashdoters.

here is the ad:
http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2012/12/14.aspx

and here is the proposers' day conference:
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=e21984e31d49c3780966a53983daa4f6&tab=core&tabmode=list&=

DARPA reports that more than $300 billion worth of satellites are in the geosynchronous orbit, many retired due to failure of one component even if 90% of the satellite works just as well as the day it was launched. DARPA's Phoenix program seeks to develop technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components such as antennas or solar arrays from retired, nonworking satellites in GEO and demonstrate the ability to create new space systems at greatly reduced cost. "If this program is successful, space debris becomes space resource," says DARPA Director, Regina E. Dugan. However satellites in GEO are not designed to be disassembled or repaired, so it's not a matter of simply removing some nuts and bolts says David Barnhart. "This requires new remote imaging and robotics technology and special tools to grip, cut, and modify complex systems." For a person operating such robotics, the complexity is similar to trying to assemble via remote control multiple Legos at the same time while looking through a telescope. "If you've got a satellite up there already, don't worry, this isn't going to be some illicit grave-robbing mission to create hordes of evil Frankensatellites," reports Dvice. "DARPA says the agency will make sure and get permission before it chops anything up for scrap."

DARPA reports that more than $300 billion worth of satellites are in the geosynchronous orbit, many retired due to failure of one component even if 90% of the satellite works just as well as the day it was launched. DARPA's Phoenix program seeks to develop technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components such as antennas or solar arrays from retired, nonworking satellites in GEO and demonstrate the ability to create new space systems at greatly reduced cost. "If this program is successful, space debris becomes space resource," says DARPA Director, Regina E. Dugan. However satellites in GEO are not designed to be disassembled or repaired, so it's not a matter of simply removing some nuts and bolts says David Barnhart. "This requires new remote imaging and robotics technology and special tools to grip, cut, and modify complex systems." For a person operating such robotics, the complexity is similar to trying to assemble via remote control multiple Legos at the same time while looking through a telescope. "If you've got a satellite up there already, don't worry, this isn't going to be some illicit grave-robbing mission to create hordes of evil Frankensatellites," reports Dvice. "DARPA says the agency will make sure and get permission before it chops anything up for scrap."

The summary and linked press releases are light on details so here is what I gleaned from the photograph of the chip based on some experience in the area of microwave/mm-wave device and circuit work. There will probably be much more technical information in upcoming papers in the research literature.

Based on the photo of the chip on the linked DARPA page this is not a receiver, but a low-noise amplifier (LNA) which would be used as the front-end for an imaging sensor or communications/radar receiver. It would be straightforward to turn this into an imaging detector at this point by adding a detector after the LNA though I don't think this has one. For a synthetic aperture radar more circuits will be required, especially a mixer to downconvert the frequency.

The slashdot summary misquotes the article saying that the circuit has "gain of 0.85 THz" but should say "gain at 0.85 THz". The LNA appears to have 10 amplifications stages which is very large for a LNA, which suggests that the gain per stage is still quite low at 0.85THz. This is to be expected as the best per-transistor gain cutoff frequencies are not too far 1THz that I'm aware of. The circuit also appears to be built in coplanar waveguide (a metallized signal strip in the middle surrounded by two ground strips) which is easy to fabricate and good for a research environment but it has a higher loss than microstrip (a signal line above a ground plane).

Anyway that's my 2 cents.

There is a patent available in the public domain www.google.com/patents/US5402340.pdf Nearly unbelievable = I nearly didn't believe it (until I read the patent). There are quite a few PhD theses out there discussing and studying the use of gravitational sensing for navigation, and NAVSOP could certainly be combined with all sorts of other navigation aiding systems in a multisensor/source navigation engine. We are still a little way off from a miniature cold atom interferometer.... http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/DSO/Programs/Precision_Inertial_Navigation_Systems_(PINS).aspx

Here's the actual press release (which Network World just cut-and-pasted): http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2012/04/20.aspx

So what the fuck is the alternative, then?

Um, it's a glider, launched from a rocket, which would probably use a hydrogen based rocket fuel or some other.. um.. why am I answering an AC?

In 2011, Google spent $5.2 billion on research

Just to put that in perspective, the entire DARPA research budget for 2011 was 3.28 billion. This is the organization that develops a lot of the "Gee whiz" technology oft discussed right here on Slashdot. For a single company to devote more money to R&D than DARPA is just mind-blowing.

DARPA has of course done amazing things in its history, and if Google can even approach the same magnitude of results it will change the technology world. Whether it can achieve something that impressive is an open question.

Interestingly, the current DARPA director, Regina Dugan, has announced she is leaving the Pentagon to work for Google. So perhaps I am not the only one to notice the parallels ... Dr. Dugan is one of a very small handful of people with experience managing multi-billion-dollar research budgets.

PDF with full details available at:
https://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/DARPA-BAA-12-11/listing.html

Press release at:
http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2011/12/05.aspx

I can't believe this silly disclaimer DARPA has on their site. Read it carefully. They're doing it wrong.

http://www.darpa.mil/external_Link.aspx?url=http://i.imgur.com/slZOR.jpg ;)

Are you trying to suggest that ICBM technology came from NASA? That NASA gave rocket technology to the military? Or even that NASA does no military research? I think you're wrong. NASA was formed by dissolving NACA. NACA, founded in the first World War, was the proud inheritor of all the rocket (and jet engine) technology the US pilfered from the Germans after WWII. Try reading about Werner Von Braun. A former nazi officer, he is the father of the American space program, not NASA. He and his nazi team are the inventors of the ICBM. NASA got its rocket technology from the military, not the other way around.

And to assert that DARPA is non military is patently ridiculous. Are you aware that the "D" in DARPA stands for "defense?" Have you taken a peek at their website or the projects they've worked on? You'll notice that the website ends in .MIL.

As for all that spending in the 80s, there is at least one military application -- GPS -- that is now in rampant civilian use. It's probably in your phone unless you have a crappy phone.

As for CDs, the CD itself is a consumer product but it's my understanding that the underlying digital audio sampling technology was largely developed and refined through military funding out of a desire to enable encrypted voice communications. Sadly, I've got no sources here. Just a vague recollection of a lecture in college years ago.

I'm not a big fan of US military spending policies, but I do believe there are countless civilian uses for old military technology. Sadly, it is the prospect of war and annihilation that actually scares folks into funding the research which turns theoretical possibilities into useable devices.

ICBMs contributed to launch vehicle technology which contributed to satellite technology which contributed to a lot of things.
Yes there were a lot of money spent on things that are now obsolete due to the end of the cold war. There were also a lot of things that may never have been built without it. GPS is an excellent example of this. It was originally a Defence Department project because the military needed a way to target munitions accurately and to track it's assets. Private companies have tried and failed to put up satellite constellations, think Uridium, but the Government paid for GPS and ensured that it worked. Another major project that was advanced by the military was the US Interstate system. There was a lot of opposition to paying for the system but the defence department chipped in quite a bit because one of the considerations in the placement of these highways was the movement of troops and materials during time of war.

Look at all the things that come out of DARPA. Many DARPA technologies are now in civilian use.

Yes, there has been a lot of money spent on the military in the 20th century. It is also debatable whether or not it was a waste. Is it a waste for a bank to spend millions of dollars on a safe that will never be attacked by thieves because the thieves know they can never get in? I have a saying; any state not sufficiently protected by military assets will soon become the property of another state. Were the Trident submarines a waste? Maybe. Did Trident submarines ever fire a nuke in anger? No. Did they deter the USSR from attacking the US and the countries it protects? Maybe.

Falcon airframe
Waveriders (you want to look at Viscous Waveriders, or maybe Osculating Cone)

It looks closest (IMHO) to the Min CD variant of the Viscous Waveriders, but that is rated on the website at only Mach 14. The Mach 25 waverider design doesn't have the upturns at the back. The osculating cones method is also given at only Mach 6.

As for the uses, the aerospaceweb site also has some examples of potential use. It suggests that airframes designed for cruising at mach 20 may well be used for single-stage-to-orbit applications. I still think the vehicle is more likely to be used as a launchpad for a rocket, since it's reusable (as per White Knight) and likely to be much cheaper than either the shuttle's boosters or a conventional first stage.

Holy crap - you mean Disney got it right?
Flight of the Navigator spaceship
Darpa Falcon

Did you notice the thing about how it does have an engine?

Follow the link to the DARPA site. DARPA says it does not have one. The article linked by the OP got it wrong.

Odds are this link is going to be more accurate.

Looking at this rendering of the design, my first reaction is: how the hell can it see anything with that enormous chunk in the middle? Is that the secondary reflector? Or is that where the curved CCD will be housed (obviating the need for a secondary: it would be the secondary). And there's an awful lot of superstructure to hold that thing in place: won't that also obscure the field of view? Any optics experts want to field this one?

First note that it is reported to have a three and a half meter mirror. All mirrors in this size are really multiple mirrors that use servos to keep them in common focus, so it is likely really a ring of smaller mirrors.

Second, of course the CCD camera is mounted in front of the mirrors. No high performance optical system puts extra optics in the way, and with a super-fast F/1 focal length it forms the image directly in front of the mirror, only longer focal length mirrors can extract the image to the side or behind. The large housing no doubt includes advanced (and secret) active optics to smooth out the image - the real "secret sauce".

Looking at this rendering of the design, my first reaction is: how the hell can it see anything with that enormous chunk in the middle? Is that the secondary reflector? Or is that where the curved CCD will be housed (obviating the need for a secondary: it would be the secondary). And there's an awful lot of superstructure to hold that thing in place: won't that also obscure the field of view?

Any optics experts want to field this one?

Heres the link

https://actuv.darpa.mil/

Here's the link to the game.

https://actuv.darpa.mil/Default.aspx

Is it really so hard to post to the actual source of this type of information? Instead submitter links to networkworld... which for some reason links to the leaderboard, but not the download site. For those wondering, here's the download link: http://www.darpa.mil/VideoFiles/ACTUV/DARPA%20ACTUV%20Game.zip