DARPA

What DARPA is

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is a research agency of the United States Department of Defense ^[2]. Its headquarters is at 675 North Randolph St. in Ballston, Virginia ^[2]. On its own site the agency states its mission as "to create and prevent technological surprise for our national security," and says it has held to that mission since 1958 ^[1].

Why it was created

The agency was created on 7 February 1958, under its original name, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA ^[2]. DARPA's own account of its origin points to the launch of Sputnik in 1957: the agency says it was created in response to that launch ^[1]. The two statements fit together — the launch came first, the agency was established the following February.

A name that changed, and changed back

The name has moved back and forth. ARPA became DARPA in March 1972; the agency returned to the name ARPA in February 1993; and it became DARPA again in March 1996 ^[2]. What did not change is the parent department: DARPA sits under the United States Department of Defense ^[2]. Nor did the mission statement change: the agency dates its stated mission to 1958 and presents it as unchanged since then ^[1].

The Grand Challenges

The clearest window into how DARPA works is its prize competitions. Its first Grand Challenge, held on 13 March 2004, was its first major attempt to use a prize-based competition to attract novel performers and ideas ^[3]. The stated aim was to accelerate autonomous vehicle technology — vehicles that drive themselves, sensing their surroundings and deciding what to do without a person at the controls — that could ultimately substitute for people in hazardous military operations such as supply convoys ^[3]. DARPA described the outcome in human rather than technical terms: the 2004 event, it said, created a community of innovators, engineers, students, programmers, off-road racers and backyard mechanics ^[3].

The agency did not wait long to build on it. It announced a second Grand Challenge just one day after the first ended ^[3]. A third competition followed in 2007: the Urban Challenge, in which driverless vehicles drove in a staged city environment ^[3].

How a prize competition works

A prize competition works differently from the usual way of paying for research. Instead of hiring a named contractor to deliver a specified machine, the agency sets out a goal and a reward and lets anyone who thinks they can reach the goal try. The cost of entering is low and the field is wide, which is the mix DARPA described after the 2004 event ^[3]. It also shifts what the sponsor has to know in advance: the agency does not have to commit to one design before it can see what different approaches actually do.

Where it stands

A government agency's stated purpose rarely survives unchanged for decades. DARPA's has: the same sentence about creating and preventing technological surprise has been attached to it since 1958 ^[1], and it carried that statement through the changes of name in 1972, 1993 and 1996 ^[2]. The Grand Challenges show one concrete way the agency has pursued that purpose — opening a hard technical problem to people outside the agency and rewarding whoever solves it ^[3].