An Insider’s View Of DARPA, The World’s Most Advanced Research Agency

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, has been dubbed the Pentagon’s ‘department of mad science.’ Set up response the Soviet Union’s surprise launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1958, DARPA carries out research and development beyond the cutting edge. The agency has driven world-changing innovations as the internet, self-driving vehicles and stealth technology, and more recently research into m-RNA-based vaccines and other technologies to fight COVID-19. DARPA is shrouded in secrecy and manages a mass of classified programs, and few outsiders appreciate how it really works. A rare insider’s view reveals how the agency transforms far-out ideas into practical technology.

Dr. Timothy P. Grayson is the Director of the Strategic Technology Office at DARPA, and in a new interview with Cambridge-based filmmaker Dr. Samuele Lilliu published in the peer-reviewed video journal Scientific Video Protocols, Grayson sheds light on what drives this engine of extreme technology. You can see the full interview (one hour and 44 minutes) here.

There are many surprises. For one thing, as Grayson says, “we don’t do requirements.” He does not see DARPA’s role as solving the problems identified by the armed forces, but looking at the bigger picture.

“We’re often contrarians,” says Grayson. “And stealth is a great example. The Air Force at the time was all about making planes go faster, supersonics, and just go faster. DARPA out there pushing prototypes for stealth was really trying to open up not just new technology but a new way of thinking about what the mission was and how we conducted that mission. ‘Oh, maybe you don’t have to go so fast if it’s really hard for a radar to see you.’”

The result was a transformation in air power. Instead of the Mach-3 B-70 Valkyrie which would have been an easy target for Russian air missiles despite its speed and altitude, the U.S. Air Force ended up with the stealthy B-2 Spirit, a bomber able to slip past defenses and hit targets without being seen. DARPA had solved the real problem, not the one the Air Force thought it had. In the process, DARPA developed technology for stealth fighters like the F-35 whose radar invisibility means opponents literally will not see them coming.

This approach means working for DARPA takes a certain type of researcher. And while most people working at the agency have PhDs and have carried out their own research, it is not a matter of academic qualifications.

“We don’t have any firm requirements on credentials,” says Grayson.

Rather than just being an expert in one field, working for DARPA requires knowledge across a wide range of technical fields.

“That’s one thing that differentiates a DARPA program manager from a lot of other very accomplished researchers. You could have someone who is one of the world leading researchers for their academic areas, and they work in it their entire career but you ask that person to step outside that lane, and they get very uncomfortable.”

DARPA Program Managers need to be fast studies, able to absorb and digest technical information rapidly. Interviewer Samuele Lilliu suggest Elon Musk as someone with the right kind of skills to work at DARPA, and Grayson agrees.

“He’s not building SpaceX rockets or he’s not building and designing batteries himself. But he’s a quick enough study that he can ask the right questions and make informed decisions. That’s kind of the model that we look at for our program managers,” comments Grayson.

Grayson focuses so much on program managers because, surprisingly enough, there are no dedicated DARPA laboratories or teams of scientists in secret underground facilities. Instead everything is outsourced to industry and academia, with the program managers playing the pivotal role of managing and co-ordinating the effort.

“We don’t have DARPA labs,” says Grayson. “It pretty much begins and ends with the program managers.”

There are roughly a hundred program managers at DARPA, in six technical directorates known as Offices. Grayson’s Strategic Technical Office. Others include the Biological Technologies Office, the Microsystems Technology Office, and the Tactical Technology Office. All of them give program managers more or less total autonomy in what they do and how they do it.

“They generate the ideas, they execute their program activities, overseeing them. But, again, the actual research work is conducted extramurally,” says Grayson. “We at the office level have very little control or oversight of what they do or even what when they start the programs.”

This level of freedom has been extremely fruitful for taking of toughest technical challenges, those that are ‘DARPA hard.’ These are problems where the best solution is completely unknown – like stealth rather than simply increasing aircraft speed, and where the risk of failure, often large, is part of the equation. The high-risk/high-reward philosophy is part of DARPA’s DNA. But that does not mean simply chasing wild ideas.

“I like to characterize how we do things fairly uniquely as smart risk-taking,” says Grayson.

Program plans are built around evaluating and managing technical risks. A set of questions known as the Heilmeier Catechism, after a former DARPA Director, help focus program managers in making a realistic evaluation of any new projects and how to balance the risk with the potential benefits.

Grayson estimates that something like 10% of DARPA projects go directly into a military production program. And he’s happy with that low number.

“Because if we were doing things that were so well aligned with the production programs, we’re probably not out there taking enough risks, and we’re probably not being contrarian enough,” says Grayson.

Far more DARPA-developed technology does not transition directly, but goes via indirect routes. This typically happens when something DARPA originally developed gets carried forward by a government, commercial or academic research organisation as happened with m-RNA vaccine research, which led to the Moderna and Pfizer
PFE
vaccines. DARPA awarded Moderna a $24m grant in 2013 to develop the necessary m-RNA technology, an investment showing spectacularly good foresight .

So what are Grayson’s team working on now?

One of the Strategic Technology Office’s major drives is towards what Grayson terms ‘Mosaic Warfare’. Grayson sees this as a transformational approach to fighting wars, shifting away from focusing on individual aircraft, ships and tanks and looking more at specific elements – sensors, communications networks and weapons. The aim is to achieved massed firepower where the sensors are not necessarily in the same places as the shooters (like directing ground-launched missiles from drones). It’s a radical approach which will requiring different ways of thinking. Making it work will indeed be DARPA Hard.

Find out more about Grayson’s take on Mosaic Warfare in the full interview, with both transcript and video at Scientific Video Protocols.

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