- When, in October 1957, the USSR launched the first man-made
earth satellite, the basketball-sized Sputnik, it caught the United States
off guard and sent the government into fits. Not only had the Soviets exploded
an atomic bomb years before the Americans predicted they would, but now
they were leading the "space race." In response, the Defense
Department approved funding for a new U.S. satellite project, headed by
former Nazi SS officer Wernher von Braun, and created, in 1958, the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to make certain that the United
States forever after maintained "a lead in applying state-of-the-art
technology for military capabilities and to prevent technological surprise
from her adversaries."
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- Almost half a century later, what's left of the USSR
is a collapsed group of half-failed states, while the U.S. stands alone
as the globe's sole hyperpower. Yet DARPA, the agency for an arms-race
world, seems only to be warming up to the chase. There may be no country
left to take the lead from us, the nearest military competitor being China
which reportedly had $65 billion in military expenditures in 2002 (compared
to our $466 billion according to GlobalSecurity.org) and which, only in
2003, put its first "Taikonaut" into outer space. Undaunted,
DARPA continues to develop high-tech weapons systems for 2025-2050 and
beyond ñ some of them standard fare like your run-of-the-mill. hypersonic
bombers, others more exotic.
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- In an August 2003 article, Los Angeles Times reporter
Charles Pillar noted that DARPA has put forth some of the "most boneheaded
ideas ever to spring from the government" -- including a "mechanical
elephant" that never made it into the jungles of Vietnam and telepathy
research that never quite afforded the U.S. the ability to engage in psychic
spying.
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- As former DARPA Director Charles Herzfeld noted in 1975,
"When we fail, we fail big." Little has changed. According to
DARPA's current chief, some 85%-90% of its projects fail to meet their
full objectives. Still, Piller points out, DARPA "has been behind
some of the world's most revolutionary inventions" ñ "the
Internet, the global positioning system, stealth technology and the computer
mouse."
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- DARPA's spectacular failure rate and noteworthy successes
stem from its high risk ventures. For years DARPA has funded extremely
unconventional, sometimes beyond-the-pale, avant-garde research in all
realms of science and technology. It is, perhaps, the most creative place
in our vast government for a scientist who wants to stretch his or her
mind in adventurous directions and be well paid to do so. If you have a
wild idea, DARPA's the place to try it out. Said Harvard University pathologist
Donald Ingber in a 2001 Los Angeles Times article, "DARPA [has] funded
things that a lot of people thought were ridiculous, and some that people
thought were impossible. They make things happen."
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- There's only one caveat -- in one way or another most
every project, however mind-stretching, invariably must end, directly or
indirectly, in the incapacitation or death of future American enemies.
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- The projects are often some of the most lethal ever conceived.
Over the years, DARPA research has led to a plethora of products designed
to maim and kill, among them the: M-16 rifle, Hellfire-missile-equipped
Predator drones, stealth fighters and bombers, surface-to-surface artillery
rocket systems, Tomahawk cruise missiles, B-52 bomber upgrades, Titan missiles,
Javelin portable "fire and forget" guided missiles and cannon-launched
Copperhead guided projectiles, to name but a few.
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- A question seldom asked is why pie-in-the-sky creativity
exists unfettered and fostered only in the context of lethal technologies?
As the U.S. continues its mad dash into a post-Cold War, one-nation arms
race, fears of a missile gap or the menace of a technologically advanced
foreign foe drop away as explanations; nor can it just be a generalized
fear of falling behind the rest of the world. Look at the state of education
in America -- in 2002 the U.S. ranked 18th in UNICEF's list of teenagers
in 24 industrialized countries falling below international academic benchmarks.
Despite the poor showing, no one is rushing to set up an Advanced Education
Research Agency.
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- According to the CIA's annually-published World Factbook,
"the US is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning
of fossil fuels," yet the Environmental Protection Agency's "National
Center for Environmental Innovation" is a far cry from a DARPA-like
entity. It doled out a mere $737,500 in seven state-innovation grants in
2003. DARPA, by comparison, spent about $3 billion on some 200 projects
that ranged from space weapons to unmanned aerial vehicles. But just because
the government isn't pouring money into the projects of scientists eager
to attack environmental problems doesn't mean environmental research is
of no interest to it. Quite the opposite. DARPA has taken up the torch
and is funding a rigorous research program aimed at finding novel ways
to weaponize the natural world.
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- As evidenced by their Vietnam-era mechanical elephant
project and a recent grant to researchers developing a robotic canine called
"Big Dog" for the Army, DARPA might be said to have something
of an animal fetish, reflected perhaps in various projects whose very names
evoke the ethos of the wild kingdom. Among them:
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- WolfPack, a group (pack) of miniaturized, unattended
ground sensors that are meant to work together in detecting, identifying
and jamming enemy communications; Piranha, a project to "enable submarines
to engage elusive maneuvering land and sea targets"; and Hummingbird
Warrior, a program to produce a helicopter-like vertical take-off and landing
unmanned air vehicle (UAV).
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- The agency also embraces the imagery of the natural environment
in its "Organic Air Vehicles in the Trees" project, which sounds
downright "green," though it's actually a tiny UAV that will
fly in the forests, over hills and through cities searching for enemies.
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- Allusions to the natural world, however, are the least
of it. While the military is well-versed in employing all sorts of creatures
to do its bidding, from Army guard dogs to Navy dolphins used for locating
sea mines, DARPA is keen on branching out from class Mammalia. One way
is through its "Bio-Revolution" program which seeks to "harness
the insights and power of biology to make U.S. warfighters and their equipment...
more effective."
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- Killer Bees
- After all those years of warnings about sinister African
killer bees inexorably heading toward the U.S., DARPA decided to draft
bees into military service. In 2002, projects examining the performance
of honeybees trained to detect explosives and locate other "odors
of interest" were launched. Since then, DARPA has been creating insect
databases while increasing efforts to "understand how to use endemic
insects as collectors of environmental information." DARPA says it
has already tested "this endemic insect system in key operational
demonstrations here and abroad." How long until they start thinking
about weaponizing insects as well? Instead of your plain old, garden variety
Stinger missiles, you could have a swarm of missile stingers.
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- Fly Boys
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- At the University of Florida, DARPA-sponsored researchers
are working on biologically-inspired "eyes," patterned after
those of flies. "We think we can use this concept to make smart weapons
smarter," says professor of materials science and engineering Paul
Holloway, the project's lead researcher. It's a safe bet that a new set
of eyes would help, since the current crop of smart weapons couldn't get
much dumber! Despite the pronouncements of U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Timothy
Keating who, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, bragged of a military
"plan that... reduces to an absolute minimum, if not eliminates, noncombatant
casualties," nothing proved further from the case. While 68% of munitions
used in Operation Iraqi Freedom were precision-guided, as opposed to only
6.5% in the 1991 Gulf War, the ratio of civilian to military deaths turned
out to be almost twice as high this time around, according to Carl Conetta
of the Massachusetts-based think-tank, Project on Defense Alternatives.
Are fly eyes the answer? Per
- Little Shop of Horrors
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- In July 2003, DARPA held a workshop to "help researchers
in various disciplines self-assemble into teams capable of developing plant
inspired actuation systems that will ultimately have application in military
adaptive or morphing structures." What's on the horizon then? Giant
Venus Fly-trap-inspired fighting vehicles? A brigade of Swamp-Thing warriors?
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- (Octo)Pie in the sky camouflage
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- According to the agency's 2003 strategic plan, "DARPA-supported
researchers are studying how geckos climb walls and how an octopus hides
to find new approaches to locomotion and highly adaptive camouflage. The
idea is to let nature be a guide toward better engineering." Imagine
the ink-squirting, suction-cup-covered frogman of the future!
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- Remote-Control Robo-Rats
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- In 2002, DARPA researchers demonstrated that they could
remotely control the movements of a rat with electrodes implanted into
its brain using a laptop computer. In 2003 and 2004, DARPA's "Robolife"
program researchers will turn their attention to the "performance
of rats, birds and insects in performing missions of interest to DoD, such
as exploration of caves or covert deposition of sensors." Militarizing
the animal world, however, carries its own risks. Take World War II's Project
X-Ray in which bats with incendiary explosives strapped to their bodies
turned on their military masters and set fire to an U.S. Army airfield.
Just imagine what an army of Army rats might do! Anybody remember Willard?
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- The Wildest of Apes
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- Perhaps the most frightening of DARPA's weaponized science
projects are those that deal with militarily enhancing that most violent
of apes -- man. In its 2003 strategic plan, DARPA touted the "Enhanced
Human Performance" component of its "Bio-Revolution" program
whose aim is to prevent humans from "becoming the weakest link in
the U.S. military." Lest rats, bees and trees become the dominant
warriors, Enhanced Human Performance will "exploit the life sciences
to make the individual warfighter stronger, more alert, more endurant,
and better able to heal." Yes, what now captivates DARPA researchers
once captivated comic-book readers -- the dream of creating a real-life
Captain America, that weakling-turned-Axis-smashing-super-patriot by way
of "super soldier serum."
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- Just Say "No" to No Doze
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- The U.S. military has long plied its fighting men with
uppers. In Vietnam, medics sated soldiers' need for speed by doling out
government-issue amphetamines. In 2002, U.S. pilots under the influence
of Air Force "go-pills" (which Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Jennifer
Ferrau calls a "fatigue management tool") killed four Canadian
soldiers and injured eight others when they dropped a laser-guided bomb
on a Canadian military training exercise in Afghanistan. Today, DARPA's
Continuous Assisted Performance (CAP) program is aimed at creating a 24-7
trooper by "investigating ways to prevent fatigue and enable soldiers
to stay awake, alert, and effective for up to seven days straight without
suffering any deleterious mental or physical effects and without using
any of the current generation of stimulants."
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- This is your brain on DARPA
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- DARPA researchers are also at work on the "Brain
Machine Interface" ("neuromics") project, designed as a
mind/machine interface, allowing mechanical devices to be controlled via
thought-power. Thus far, researchers have taught a monkey to move a computer
mouse and a telerobotic arm simply by thinking about it. With arrays of
up to 96 electrodes implanted in their brains, the animals are able to
reach for food with a robotic arm. Researchers even transmitted the signals
over the internet, allowing remote control of an robotic arm 600 miles
away. In the future they hope to develop a "non-invasive interface"
for human use. Says DARPA, "The long-term Defense implications of
finding ways to turn thoughts into acts, if it can be developed, are enormous:
imagine U.S. warfighters that only need use the power of their thoughts
to do things at great distances." For years, the U.S. military has
been improving its ability to reach out and kill someone. What's the mantra
of the future? Maybe, if you think it, they will di
- Life (and Death) Sciences
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- Leonard J. Buckley, a program manager in materials chemistry
at DARPA's Defense Science Office, has said, in regard to insect-inspired
optics research, "Inspiration from nature... will allow more life-like
qualities in the system." And, says DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker,
"We're interested in investigating biological organisms because they
have evolved over many, many years to be particularly good at surviving
in the environment. ...and we hope to learn from some of those strategies
that Mother Nature has developed."
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- Poor Mother Nature! What hope has she when faced with
an over $400 billion dollar defense budget. What can she do when the most
powerful impetus for free-thinking scientists to consider her is in the
urge to weaponize her offspring. Under DARPA, the life sciences have become
a fertile area to further the science of death and destruction in an effort,
in the words of the DARPA Defense Sciences Office, to overcome the "Frailties
of Life" to achieve "Super Physiological Performance." How
wonderfully Nietzschean!
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- Such is the state of government-sponsored innovation
in our land. If you're a researcher in crucial fields and want the time,
funding, and latitude to be creative, your work must benefit the Pentagon
in its race to make sure that the next Saddam can be, in the words of Maj.
Gen. Raymond Odierno, "caught like a rat" by Capt. Ben Willard
of the Army's rat patrol.
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- Other than finding new ways of circumventing international
law (e.g. bypassing violations of national airspace with space-launched
weapons) which the U.S. already does quite well with current technology
or the mountain climber's mantra "because its there," it's hard
to fathom why the government is still locked in a Cold War-style arms race
in a single hyperpower world. The only explanation available lies in the
driving will of the ever-expanding military-industrial complex, first named
by President Eisenhower back in 1961. This would certainly help explain
why we have no educational or environmental DARPAs. For today's researchers,
DARPA is, both intellectually and financially, a fabulous and alluring
gravy train, the only agency that puts real money into and rewards creative
and maverick thinking. The freedom to dream and create, DARPA's mandate,
is seductive and exceptional and, as such, so dangerous that we have to
ask ourselves whether war-making isn't now America's most advanced product.
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- http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_201.html
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