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11.08

Does DARPA Still Effectively Spur U.S. Technological Innovation?

By Barton Reppert

An academic expert on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — the gang that brought us the Internet, the laser and the PC — says that while the 50-year-old Defense Department agency continues to be a target of concern and criticism, particularly among the university research community, it still may be premature to evaluate its overall performance since Dr. Tony Tether took charge in 2001.

Dr. Erica R.H. Fuchs, assistant professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, presented the assessment of DARPA in a talk, “Does DARPA Still Effectively Spur U.S. Technological Innovation?” on 14 Oct. at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) [www.itif.org], Washington, D.C., and also in a follow-up interview conducted by e-mail.

At Carnegie Mellon, one of Professor Fuchs' streams of research studies the social processes influencing technology trajectories, including the processes by which the government seeds and encourages new technology trajectories within this framework.

“It is too early to evaluate the successes or failures of the programs started since 2001,” Dr. Fuchs said. “The fact, however, that during this period DARPA lost their connection with the JASONs, and alienated many academics both from participating in the Defense Science Board and from wanting to become program managers, is not a good sign. At the same time, inherent in the way DARPA works, there may be individual program managers or office directors with DARPA that have very strong networks.”

“While DARPA’s shift since 2001 in funding from universities to industry, and its introduction of short-term deadlines has received significant criticism, DARPA may in its new role be doing a very good job . . . at (1) narrowing the ‘valley of death’ between basic research and market application, (2) coordinating innovation within a vertically fragmented industry, and (3) influencing technology development to still serve military needs, despite primary demand for computing having moved into commercial applications,” Dr. Fuchs said.

She added: “Despite the potential strengths of the recent shifts within DARPA, the extent to which DARPA, in focusing on ‘bridging the gap’ from invention to innovation, has left the technology pipeline without new sources, remains to be seen.”

Dr. Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, commented in response to follow-up questions: “It appears that DARPA is less effective at spurring innovation outside of mission-related defense work now, compared to the 1990s. One can have a legitimate debate about whether DARPA’s shift to a more near-term and directly mission-oriented role is appropriate or not, but the impact of this shift on spurring broader commercial innovation appears to be negative.”

DARPA marked its 50th anniversary on 7 Feb. of this year.

In 13 March testimony by Tether before a House Armed Services subcommittee, the DARPA director told the panel: “DARPA’s original mission, by the Soviet Union beating the United States into space with Sputnik in October 1957, was to prevent technological surprise. This mission has evolved over time. Today, DARPA’s mission is to prevent technological surprise for us and to create technological surprise for our adversaries. Stealth is one example of how we created technological surprise.”

Tether explained that “DARPA conducts its mission by searching worldwide for revolutionary high-payoff ideas and then sponsoring research projects that bridge the gap between fundamental discoveries and their military use. DARPA is the Department of Defense’s only research agency not tied to a specific operational mission. DARPA supplies technological options for the entire Department and is designed to be a specialized ‘technological engine’ for transforming DOD.”

On 15 April 2005, then-IEEE-USA President Gerard A. Alphonse sent a letter to Senator John W. Warner, at that time serving as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressing IEEE-USA’s “deep concern” about DARPA’s decision “to divert resources from fundamental research to more narrow, application-oriented projects.”

“While IEEE-USA certainly understands that the war in Iraq and the global war on terrorism hasten the need to develop and deliver new technologies to the field, we strongly believe that cutting off the vital research supply line is a shortsighted and ultimately self-defeating strategy,” Dr. Alphonse wrote. “As one of the crown jewels of the federal R&D enterprise, DARPA’s historical mission has been to invest in high-risk, revolutionary technologies that promise high payoffs. DARPA has been successful, not only in giving our warriors a technological edge on the battlefield, but also in pushing the envelope on new technologies that have had significant economic and social payoffs, such as the Internet. In addition, by investing in cutting-edge research at universities, DARPA helps train future generations of the best and brightest engineers and scientists.”

According to Professor Fuchs, her study involving DARPA focuses on the processes used by the agency to promote technology development in microelectronics and integrated photonics in the Microsystems Technology Office. Her results suggest that historically, DARPA program managers have used five steps to seed and encourage new technology trajectories in the United States:

1. IDENTIFYING DIRECTIONS by bringing top researchers together to brainstorm technologies to meet mission goals;

2. GAINING MOMENTUM around emerging ideas by seeding disparate researchers working on common themes to gain momentum around emerging ideas;

3. BUILDING COMMUNITY and increasing information flows by bringing those researchers together to talk about their work;

4. PROVIDING THIRD-PARTY VALIDATION of those emerging research directions to other funding agencies and to industry; and

5. NOT SUSTAINING THE TECHNOLOGY, but instead transitioning its continued development to the armed services and industry.

“Since Tony Tether has come into the directorship, these processes have remained the same, but the recipients of these processes have changed,” Fuchs said, adding: “With the recent shift (since 2001) in funding from universities to industry, DARPA program managers are frequently now providing seed funding to teams of academics, start-ups and other industry members, led by system contractors, and then bringing these teams together to share their ideas.”

Barton Reppert is a freelance science and technology writer specializing in S&T policy coverage. He previously worked for 18 years as a reporter and editor with The Associated Press in Washington, New York and Moscow.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.