DARPA News

The DARPA Open Price Exploration for National security (OPEN) research and development program aims to develop forecasting technology to enable the market to better understand component-based pricing information and supply and demand for a range of critical commodities such as base metals, rare earth metals, and other materials. The program has selected performers for its seven-month base period.

Efforts to develop novel biologic therapeutics have provided critical resources to enable warfighter readiness and counter existing and emerging biothreats; however, current delivery modalities limit biologics’ efficacy and rapid deployment. The goal of DARPA’s new Hermes program is to overcome the challenges associated with broad, intracellular delivery of biologics to diverse cell and tissue types by developing new delivery modalities that provide systemic distribution with limited negative side effects.

In 2022, the DARPA Forward event series offered a powerful lesson in breaking down barriers of entry in pursuit of national security breakthroughs. Today, the DARPAConnect initiative aims to keep up that momentum in search of the best ideas and talent.

Have you ever wondered if that video you’re watching, the photo you’re looking at, or even that person on the other line is the real deal? Deepfakes aren’t just Hollywood magic anymore-they’re part of our everyday lives, found in everything from the news we consume to the memes we share. During this panel, experts dive into the world of deepfakes to break down the impacts of digital deception and what we can do about it.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is joining forces with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to expand the Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge (AIxCC). Cyber and ransomware attacks on America’s health care systems have increased significantly in recent years, often preventing patients from receiving care and compromising their personal information . By collaborating with DARPA on the AIxCC, ARPA-H aims to spur the development of AI-enabled technology to safeguard hospitals, pharmacies, and medical devices from cyberattacks.

DARPA’s GOLDen hour extended EVACuation, or GOLDEVAC, program aims to test whether a field medic could manage a complex polytrauma patient via automated resuscitation tools, starting near the point of injury and continuing throughout the entire evacuation process. Specifically, GOLDEVAC seeks to determine whether it is possible to resuscitate and oxygenate a patient, for up to two days, via a single tube inserted into a patient’s blood vessel, without the risk of blood clots or bleeding.

The threat of manipulated media has steadily increased as automated manipulation technologies become more accessible, and social media continues to provide a ripe environment for viral content sharing.

As part of the AI Cyber Challenge’s Small Business Track Competition, DARPA awarded seven companies $1 million each to develop AI-enabled cyber reasoning systems that automatically find and fix software vulnerabilities at scale.

DARPA’s new Rubble to Rockets (R2) program aims to overcome current limitations to manufacturing in supply chain-denied environments by developing production and design approaches that can accommodate widely variable input materials.

DARPA played a seminal role in establishing materials science as a discipline. One of the latest disruptive efforts in new materials and applications, the Additive Manufacturing of MicrosystEms (AMME) program, seeks to launch microsystems manufacturing far beyond today’s state of the art.

Imagine a world where the number of vehicle accidents is cut in half. DARPA’s Learning Introspective Control (LINC) program is developing machine learning (ML) methods that may bring that scenario closer to reality.

In this episode we hear from quantum physicist Dr. Mukund Vengalattore, a program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office, who oversees a portfolio of fundamental research programs aimed at unlocking new quantum insights and overcoming challenges to enable revolutionary capabilities for defense. These include harnessing atoms and superconducting structures for novel sensing applications (imagine tiny, super-sensitive antennas, infrared detectors or gyroscopes that vastly outperform much larger antennas, IR cameras, and gyroscopes of today); developing better quantum bits (qubits) for quantum computing (including using photons to encode information in novel ways); enabling field-deployable, tactical-grade mobile atomic clocks for our troops; and discovering new quantum materials for applications ranging from quantum computing to biomedical imaging.

A new DARPA program is exploring the potential for dissolved organic matter, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and even microplastics to continually refuel, and thus extend the mission life, of ocean-deployed sensors. The BioLogical Underwater Energy, or BLUE, program seeks to solve the energy problem with low environmental impact using these abundant and energy-dense forms of marine biomass and other substances.

Commercial drone technology is advancing rapidly, providing cost-effective and robust capabilities for a variety of civil and military missions. DARPA’s Rapid Experimental Missionized Autonomy (REMA) program aims to enable a drone to autonomously continue its predefined mission when connection to the operator is lost. The program is focused on constantly providing new agnostic drone autonomy capabilities for transition in one-month intervals to outpace adversarial countermeasures. REMA progressed from program announcement to contract awards in just 70 business days.

DARPA’s new Establishing Qualification Processes for Agile Pharmaceutical Manufacturing (EQUIP-A-Pharma) program seeks to demonstrate a real-time digital regulatory approval framework for multiple finished drug products produced on a single reprogrammable hardware platform. The program aims to support up to four pilot agile pharmaceutical manufacturing sites that will generate the data required to inform the creation of a future regulatory framework.

Technological advances and changes in economic conditions are shifting the skills needed to build an adaptive and successful workforce. As underscored in the 2023 National Defense Science & Technology Strategy, the United States cannot create 21st-century capabilities using 20th-century education practices. The World Economic Forum (WEF) further predicts that by 2025, 50% of all workers worldwide will need reskilling to compete in the market. The increasing reliance on technology in jobs across the market has imposed additional challenges for the workforce, especially for those from low-income and historically marginalized populations.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is hosting an in-person gathering in San Francisco Feb. 21-22 to engage with science and technology companies, universities, and other research and engineering organizations interested in exploring scientific areas ripe for disruption. The event, called Discover DSO Day (D3), is sponsored by DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO), whose goal is to identify and pursue high-risk, high-payoff research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines and transform them into important, new game-changing technologies for U.S. national security.

We usually think of materials based on our experience in the natural world. For example, something that’s light is usually fragile (like a feather) or something heavy is usually strong (like a brick). But what if we could engineer a material that had completely new characteristics that defied properties found in nature? Engineered materials, also known as metamaterials, allow us to do just that.

DARPA has selected Aurora Flight Sciences to build a full-scale X-plane to demonstrate the viability of using active flow control (AFC) actuators for primary flight control. The award is Phase 3 of the Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program.

DARPA’s Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC) program seeks to determine whether an underexplored approach to quantum computing can achieve utility-scale operation – meaning its computational value exceeds its cost – faster than conventional predictions.