DARPA Chief Outlines Array of Future Projects

coondoggie writes to tell us that DARPA announced a wide array of new projects in a report to the House Armed Services Committee that they will be funding in the near future. "everything from advanced network and communications implementations to powerful laser and unmanned aircraft development as well as developing techniques to help military personnel survive myriad dangerous situations"

Comments

One of eight

[Raindance]

The linked article just discusses the 'networking' subset of the report. The full original outlines eight primary research areas:

Deny hiding in any environment and cultural background;
  Provide persistent situational awareness and rapid strike;
  Beat the OODA (observe-orient-decide-act) loop of modern adversaries;
  Provide cyber operations dominance;
  Remove the value of using biological weapons;
  Increase survival from life-threatening wounds;
  Restore injured warfighters to the way they were; and
  Develop core technologies that maintain U.S. military superiority.

... and has specific examples of programs within each area. Worth a look-see, particularly since DARPA's one of the few government initiatives that generally gets results.

Re:One of eight

[call-me-kenneth]

Don't you think it's interesting that for four years, the US and UK military forces in the Iraq sustained a pretty stready rate of casualties whilst the country slowly unraveled around them and a de-facto civil war / ethnic cleansing / religious genocide killed thousands of people, despite all the UAVs, ECM to jam EIDs, superstrong ballistic armour on people and vehicles, digital data and comms that have all contributed to the > $1T cost. Then in the last year or so things have quietened down considerably, due to a combination of layer-8 events - more US boots on the ground, the Sunni revolt against Al Qaeda (Iraq), Muqtada al-Sadr's ceasefire and alleged withdrawal into Iran, tighter border controls in Saudi and Syria reducing the flood of eager young Jihadists, and so on and on. (Of course it can and very likely will go tango uniform again at some point in the next five years, but we'll see.) Anyway, the point is that the gadgets can certainly help win the high-intensity phase of such a conflict, but they don't help with hearts & minds.

Re:One of eight

[samkass]

Winning the hearts and minds is completely orthogonal to the technology. Technology won't rescue you from awful strategies or misguided goals. But it still helps save lives, and I'm sure there are a lot of soldiers out there who are glad to be alive and owe it to some of the technology that's come out of DARPA.

Re:Forget that crap

[Foobar of Borg]

But they're cool, and that's the important thing. And think of the merchandising!

DARPA the breakfast cereal!
DARPA the toilet paper!
DARPA the flamethrower! (the kids love this one)

Re:For a nerdy, tech-loving toy freak...

[smilindog2000]

AFAIK, DARPA just funds research projects. People who actually work for DARPA are mostly government administrators. You have to be careful, though. DARPA isn't suppose to fund projects that directly result in any actual products for the military. It's suppose to be far-future advanced research. I was once raked over the coals for pushing for actual commercialization of a DARPA funded project (cheap, reliable, rad-hard-by-design chips). Personally, I prefer to stay clear of DARPA, and instead work on projects funded to actually build something useful for today's military. It might sound fun on slashdot, but I've found DARPA work highly frustrating... but I like building real systems, so it's a matter of preference. With research, you can change the rules at the end and declare success... it's often very political. With real systems, the proof is in the product. There's no faking your way around it.