The Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was established in 1958
as the first U.S. response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik. Since
that time, DARPA's primary role has been to maintain the United
States' technological superiority for military capabilities and
to guard against unforeseen technological advances by potential
adversaries.
The DARPA
mission is to go beyond traditional thinking and develop imaginative,
innovative and often high risk research ideas. These ideas will
offer a significant technological impact and the pursuit of these
ideas will be from the demonstration of technical feasibility through
the development of prototype systems. Strong support from the senior
Department of Defense management has been essential, with DARPA
being a deliberate counterpoint to traditional thinking and approaches.
Four decades
after it's founding, DARPA is still very similiar today. The principle
exception is its reporting chain. Initially, DARPA reported to the
Secretary and Deputy Secretary, it later came under the Under Secretary
of Defense, and more recently under the Director for Defense Research
and Engineering.
Today, DARPA
is an organization of 240 personnel (approximately 140 of which
are technical) directly managing a budget of $2 billion. Some projects
are under $1 million and a few are in the hundreds of millions of
dollars. Regardless of size, a single DARPA Program Manager is in
charge and must manage and represent the project internally and
externally.
DARPA's ability
to adapt rapidly to changing situations and to embrace opportunities
in both technology and processes, while maintaining the proven founding
principles of the Agency, makes DARPA a unique research and development
organization and the crown jewel in Defense research and development.
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