History of DARPA in Internet, Space, LUKE arm, defense
The U.S. Department of Defense has an agency called Defense Advanced Research Projects that researches advanced and emerging technologies for use by the military. It was created in response to Sputnik’s launch by Russia back in the Eisenhower era and initially called ARPA. Through this agency major leaps in science and breakthroughs in technology has led to computer technologies like the internet and graphic user interfaces or GUI’s in computers.
They created this agency as a contract in the Air Force because the U.S. wanted to not fall behind Russian space technology. There was some overlap and transfer of the funding later to NASA.
Many of the technologies included ARPANET. Some other crucial technologies that came included ballistic defense, nuclear technologies, computer work, GPS, energy spectrum including radar and infrared and x-ray and gamma rays. There was also a collaboration with other commercial companies including General Electric and Bell Labs. MIT was also instrumental in many projects.
Some notable projects include exosuits, insectlike tech machine creatures, Onion routing, and robotic arms.
See: https://www.darpa.mil/Timeline/index.html
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DARPA is a military research agency. They are part of the United States Department of Defense and assigned to develop new technologies for the military. It was widely accepted that there was a need to create an organization to administer and create these research and development projects to stay current and at the forefront militarily by being up to date with technology. This allows the military to stay competitive and not fall behind. Originally, due to the Sputnik launch, DARPA was focused on space technology as well as air defense and atomic testing programs.
Later ARPA which was the initial name of this agency changed in the 60’s when they started doing exploratory research programs and energy and information tech research programs.
In the 80’s there was an exodus of young up and coming scientists from schools and universities since ARPA had helped supported various schools like MIT and companies like General Electric and Bell Laps where they created the basis for a lot of computer companies and technologies such as Xerox and also the beginnings of networks, AI and speech recognition and early versions of VR technology.
The 80’s brought new small light weight satellites, submarines and armor and anti-armor technology.
They have also collaborated with NASA to work on X-Planes and interstellar travar. They have worked on cybersecurity. They have worked on microchip technology, weapons storage, UAV’s, jamming technology. and surveillance tech.
Check their site for the most recent projects.
They have also worked on cancer research, laser defense, media forensics to detect fakes, proteins, robotics, gene tech, plant sensors, radiological detection of things like smart phones, neural implants and HIVE CPU’s.
They also have worked on water jet packs, robotic animals, drones, brainwave interfaces for communicating silently, exoskeletons, insect-like robots, night vision, virtual vehicle simulators, early Unix and CAT tools.
They are also mentioned in some military strategy based video games as back story for the plots.
