This week on War College, we look at DARPA and some of the projects that still being carried out under the cover of official darkness.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-war-college-darpa-podcast-idUSKCN0YI1SZ
DARPA is both creepy and interesting to me. From everything to the web to stealth planes. DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY. One of the least known and was started in 1958 after Sputnik. It's origins go back the thermo nuclear weapon. I wrote this while listening to the podcast.
ARPA was the orig. name. First space agency, then NASA took over. ICBMs did not exist then, but things changed once they were in existence. Minutes to get a nuke into the U.S. is 23 minutes and 26 seconds according to them. This is all the time we would have to detect and blow them out of the sky. Everything else is myth.
Weapons systems are all a greater system. DARPA is responsible for the best and worst of technology, most elements of Iphone traced back to DARPA tech, for example.
DARPA gets the job done, where others fail due to government intervention. DARPA outsources its work to commercial business and institutes around the world, they have no labs of their own. This makes them very secretive.
Job of DARPA is to create vast weapons systems of the future, it is their mandate since 1958.
Chip in the brain programs... have a bigger picture endgame in the weapon's world and DARPA says these programs are targeted at solving brain ailments of all sorts. Neuro prosthetic into the brain of a wounded warrior to study how to cure them.
Augmented cognition to make soldiers react faster and better on the battlefield. Super soldiers, in other words.
DARPA director says everything is scifi until it becomes real. Imagined before they become real.
Working with CYBORG programs with animals. The tech we have today was born in Viet Nam by darpa scientists. It all goes back 40 or 50 years. Blue Sky techs are built upon. This is where the first sensor tech was developed, like wipers coming on when it started raining for example.
Jason scientists were told to come up with idea to lay down sensors on the HoChiMin trail to stop fighters. ADSID is a sensor the size of a parking garage cone, soldiers threw them out of helicopters onto the trail and they worked like mini acoustic radar systems.
Sensor tech now in aircraft and first made public in the Gulf War. ARPA NET, drones, gps all during vietnam war. All systems coming together to start a cyberwar field.
Now we have drones the size of beetles, sensors so small in a helmet of soldier. All moves together with bigger weapons systems, includes biohybrid drones, mixing of animal and machine is coming.
Scientists work for DARPA because they think we have to fight against nukes. Lawrence Livermoore was created to make competition among scientists. The only way to push sciences faster was to make them compete. Oppenheimer had a conscience after the war and lots of them think about that kind of thing, that's why Livermoore was created by government.
DARPA TO PUBLIC: They develop something for the war machine, then it ends up in the public. AR15 was chosen weapon for VietNam. Then adapted to autofire and became M16 assault rifle.
Scientists express regrets about what they did in DARPA. They think they are aiding national security and then later reflect on what they have done. Zazlock: social science program re: farmers in VietNam to tell Pentagon how they felt about the war: Hearts and Mind campaign. Regret: At the time Pentagon only wanted to hear that the avg. civilian was with the U.S. government, when in fact the avg. civilian was saying they were against it and communism was better alternative. Zazlock says the truth was not accepted but only what they wanted to hear at the Pentagon.
Sentient thinking machines are coming and envisioned by DOD, for warfare 25 to 28 years ahead. Lots of classifed info. LosAlamos trying to create a synthetic brain right now, super computers and neuro prosthetics into brain wounded warriors... becomes autonomous weapons, humans augmented by machines to become a weapon. Jason scientists also have this concern that super soldiers are a very bad idea, have told Pentagon this could lead to high quality brain control.
What exactly is the Pentagon and DOD planning on doing with this tech?