Who is DARPA?
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, is the central Research and Development arm of the Department of Defense. DARPA’s mission is to do advanced research and their primary responsibility is to conceive, explore, and demonstrate breakthrough concepts and advanced technologies… And what that REALLY means is that they get to invent really cool stuff! Over the decades DARPA has fulfilled its mission very well, with an impressive list of accomplishments. President Kennedy in 1961 knew that DARPA was working on the Saturn rocket when he said that we should commit our nation to landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade. He knew the rocket was coming and he knew we couldn’t get to the moon without it. Another example of a DARPA success story is The Internet which started out as Arpanet in the 1970’s. The 1980’s brought us GPS (the Global Positioning System) and the Stealth fighters, and we saw the success of the Predator and GlobalHawk robotic aircraft in the 19
