The company was awarded the new contract after its success providing
Darpa with its nuclear-threat detection kits, which are part of its D3S product range.
In addition to that of Christofilos, some other
DARPA hires seem inexplicable.
Measured by breadth of research, analysis of sources, and narrative composition, The Imagineers of War stands head and shoulders above Annie Jacobsen's The Pentagon's Brain (2015), the only other recent book about
DARPA. Although both authors selectively pluck titillating samples from the past to present
DARPA history, to one degree or another, as an expose of wasteful effort, Weinberger at least tries to be more objective.
The idea of exploding numerous nuclear weapons on the fringes of space to test the "Christofilos effect" seems outlandish today, but the fact that this project was pursued illuminates the national security environment of those times and
DARPA's willingness to undertake risky projects.
Director Arati Prabhakar in her keynote speech said there are some 200
DARPA programs at any given time--many of them classified.
The catalog is so impressive that many R&D groups have looked to
DARPA as a proven model of successful disruptive innovation (Bonvillian 2006; Belfiore 2009).
According to the Washington Times, the
DARPA is currently working on technology that will be able to replace up to five crew members on military aircraft
The
DARPA Robotics Challenge aims to advance the state of the art in robotic perception, dexterity, strength, decision making, and supervised autonomy, meaning that the robots could be controlled by nonexperts.