Darpa
Latest
The White House's 'AI Cyber Challenge' aims to crowdsource national security solutions
The White House revealed plans Wednesday to defend critical digital infrastructure by launching a DARPA-led challenge competition to build AI systems capable of proactively identifying and fixing software vulnerabilities.
NASA picks Lockheed Martin to build the nuclear rocket that’ll take us to Mars
NASA and DARPA have chosen aerospace and defense company Lockheed Martin to develop a spacecraft with a nuclear thermal rocket engine. Announced in January, the partnership — also including BWX Technologies, which will provide the reactor and fuel — is part of an initiative dubbed the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO). The agencies aim to showcase the tech no later than 2027 with an eye toward future Mars missions.
DARPA wants AR goggles to help soldiers with complex tasks
A new DARPA research project is demoing a system that displays AI-generated instructions in AR headsets to guide soldiers through complicated tasks.
NASA and DARPA will test nuclear thermal engines for crewed missions to Mars
Nuclear thermal rocket engines could help get astronauts to Mars more quickly than by chemical propulsion methods. NASA and DARPA are working on nuclear thermal propulsion tech that they hope to test as soon as 2027.
Cryptocurrency is more centralized than many advocates claim, according to report
DARPA-backed researchers found that a fifth of bitcoin nodes are using old, vulnerable tech.
DARPA taps Intel to create simulation software for off-road autonomous vehicles
The company will work on new tools to improve autonomous combat vehicles.
Hitting the Books: When the military-industrial complex came to Silicon Valley
In his latest book, War Virtually, professor of Anthropology at San José State University, Roberto J González examines the military's increasing reliance on remote weaponry and robotic systems are changing the way wars are waged.
DARPA's PROTEUS program gamifies the art of war
the Prototype Resilient Operations Testbed for Expeditionary Urban Scenarios (PROTEUS) system is a real-time strategy simulator for urban-littoral warfare.
DARPA helped make a sarcasm detector, because of course it did
Researchers from the University of Central Florida worked with DARPA to create a deep learning AI capable of understanding written sarcasm with a startling degree of accuracy.
DARPA picks Lockheed Martin and Blue Origin to build nuclear spacecraft
DARPA has picked Jeff Bezo's Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics to build and demonstrate a spacecraft driven by nuclear thermal propulsion.
Intel is working with DARPA on advanced cloud encryption
They'll try to speed up compute times in the field of fully homomorphic encryption.
Hitting the Books: Why Travis Kalanick got Uber into the self-driving car game
Autonomous vehicle developers have faced myriad similar challenged over the past three decades but nothing, it seems, turns the wheels of innovation quite like a bit of good, old-fashioned competition — one which DARPA was only more than happy to provide. In Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, Insider senior editor and former Wired Transportation editor, Alex Davies takes the reader on an immersive tour of DARPA’s “Grand Challenges” — the agency’s autonomous vehicle trials which drew top talents from across academia and the private sector in effort to spur on the state of autonomous vehicle technology — as well as profiles many of the elite engineers that took place in the competitions. In the excerpt below however Davies recalls how, back in 2014, then-CEO Travis Kalanick steered Uber into the murky waters of autonomous vehicle technology, setting off a flurry of acquihires, buyouts, furious R&D efforts, and one fatal accident — only to end up selling off the division this past December.
DARPA says it's getting closer to snatching drones out of midair
The agency is still working on its Gremlins reusable drone project.
DARPA's hypersonic weapons move closer to free-flight testing
DARPA testing is moving forward on two variants of a weapon concept that can travel faster than the speed of sound.
Heron Systems' AI pilot just beat a human in a simulated dogfight
A DARPA event pitted AI pilots against each other, and then the winner took on a human pilot wearing a VR helmet. The AI pilot shot down his simulated F-16 in all five rounds.
Watch AI-controlled virtual fighters take on an Air Force pilot on August 18th
DARPA is holding a virtual dogfight between AI and an Air Force pilot starting August 18th.
Intel wants to use AI to reconnect damaged spinal nerves
AI's use in medicine could soon extend to one of the medical world's toughest challenges: helping the paralyzed regain movement. Intel and Brown University have started work on a DARPA-backed Intelligent Spine Interface project that would use AI to restore movement and bladder control for those with serious spinal cord injuries. The two-year effort will have scientists capture motor and sensory signals from the spinal cord, while surgeons will implant electrodes on both ends of an injury to create an "intelligent bypass." From there, neural networks running on Intel tools will (hopefully) learn how to communicate motor commands through the bypass and restore functions lost to severed nerves.
DARPA is seeking giant abandoned tunnels for... reasons
DARPA just found a surefire way to creep out people around the world: make an urgent call for the kind of space you'd normally associate with supervillains. The military research agency has put out a request for giant, company- or university-managed underground tunnels that could host "research and experimentation." The requirements are oddly specific, too, with the ideal area covering "several city blocks" while including a complex design, multiple levels and variety like atriums and stairwells.
Three teams will compete for millions in DARPA's rocket launch challenge
Despite all of the advancements in space travel, rocket launches are still hindered by the fact that they take months, if not years, to plan and execute. Because that could slow vital military operations, DARPA created the Launch Challenge: a call for commercial companies to prove they can get rockets into space quickly and on short notice. Now the three finalists have been selected for the next phase of the challenge.
Android apps used by troops in combat contained vulnerabilities
Two Android apps used by the US military in live combat situations contained severe vulnerabilities that could have allowed attackers to gain access to troops' information, a Navy Inspector General report revealed. The mobile apps offered real-time messaging to coordinate with other military branches, displayed mission objectives and goals, showed satellite images of surroundings and highlighted locations of nearby enemy and friendly forces.
