DARPA Focuses on Taking Risks and Getting the Most from Its Technology Investments

For the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), experimentation is everything. The research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, DARPA is laser-focused (sometimes literally) on taking risks and looking into emerging technologies in the hopes they will pay off for the military. That mode of thinking has, over the past few decades, helped yield inventions like GPS and Siri.

DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar, who was a program manager at the agency from 1986-1993 before returning to take the reins in 2012, said in an interview with FedTech that she thinks the agency has an “inspiring” mission.  

“DARPA is a small part of the nation’s R&D ecosystem, but it has this amazing, very specific mission: to develop breakthrough technologies for national security,” she said. “So the place is filled with this wonderful mix of extreme science and engineering — and a deep commitment to public service. What’s more inspiring than that?”

Fostering a Culture of Innovation

Although Prabhakar had been gone from the agency for 19 years and the program managers and technology had changed, the underlying DNA of DARPA hadn’t. She said, “after 24 hours, I could tell the culture was exactly the same: Employees were crazy with excitement, working with their hair on fire. I knew I was home.”

DARPA’s mission and the work it performs attracts people who are that energized and talented, and the agency works to cultivate that kind of environment, according to Prabhakar. It also helps that the agency is focused on a wide range of research projects, some of which will pan out, others that won’t.

“That diversity is important. If you’re going to take risks, you have to diversify, as you don’t know what’s going to be a big success,” Prabhakar said. “We don’t want to put $3 billion in one basket, so we invest in a number of different programs with different objectives. Some will fail, and that’s OK. Others are going to completely change the world.”

Fundamentally, she said, the work that DARPA is engaged in is different than the kind of technology innovations companies in Silicon Valley are exploring. “Ours is breakthrough technologies,” she said.

“For Silicon Valley and other parts of the tech economy, it is new companies and industries. What we share is a worldview that sees technology as a powerful, disruptive force.

“DARPA’s work spans prototypes of new military systems to early funding of the pivotal new core technologies that future systems will need,” she said. “In the latter area, we often work with those in the commercial tech community — today, in areas ranging from artificial intelligence to computer security and biotech and anything else you can think of.”

Setting the Stage for the Future

DARPA is requesting $2.97 billion in President Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget, which, Prabhakar said in congressional testimony in February, is the same amount requested for fiscal year 2016; it’s also $105 million more than the $2.87 billion appropriated for that fiscal year.

She noted to the House Armed Services Committee's Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee that from fiscal years 2009 to 2013 “DARPA’s budget eroded significantly through a series of reductions, including the 8 percent across-the-board sequestration cut in FY 2013. The total reduction to DARPA’s budget from FY 2009 to FY 2013 was 20 percent in real terms.”

Stephen Welby, assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering, told the same committee that in a wide range of areas, including advanced electronic warfare, “it's going to be increasingly difficult to compete” with adversaries’ capabilities on an "investment-for-investment, dollar-for-dollar, system-for-system basis,” according to online journal FCW.

“We want to ensure that we have asymmetric advantage that we can deploy in the future,” he said, adding that DOD should move technology from its research labs “much faster into tactical application and arranging those into strategic concepts that will allow our forces to shape future battlefields.”

Prabhakar told FCW after her testimony that DARPA is continuing to do what it always has done: invest in emerging technologies. “It’s been very clear for a number of years that we had to get on a new curve for a lot of our complex military systems,” she said.

“We’re at the point of diminishing returns,” she added, arguing for the need to get more results from investments. “I feel very confident that DARPA will have the room to do what we need to do,” Prabhakar said.

For more on Prabhakar’s thoughts on DARPA and its culture, visit fedtechmagazine.com/DARPA.  

This content is made possible by FedTech. The editorial staff of Nextgov was not involved in its preparation.