SENATE ORDERS DARPA INVESTIGATION

The Senate Armed Services Committee has ordered an inves­ti­ga­tion into the research efforts of America’s mil­i­tary labs, includ­ing the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
According to a Senate source, the Committee is con­cerned that money for basic research — stud­ies that “increase fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge and under­stand­ing,” accord­ing to Pentagon reg­u­la­tions — is “being raided to fund near-​​term goals.“
DARPA has long been the military’s cen­ter for “pie in the sky” inquiries. And these efforts have gen­er­ated stun­ning suc­cesses — not the least of which is the ARPANET, the Internet’s pre­cur­sor.
But, at times in its his­tory, DARPA has tried to jus­tify its exis­tence by wan­der­ing into the realm of the con­crete, Duke University mil­i­tary his­tory pro­fes­sor Alex Roland tells Defense Tech.
“The biggest crit­i­cism that can be lev­eled at DARPA from the mid-​​1990s on is their tele­scope receded from dis­tant galax­ies to the nearby plan­ets,” Kenneth Flamm, who over­saw tech­nol­ogy Defense Department projects dur­ing the Clinton era, told Technology Review in 2001. During the Clinton admin­is­tra­tion, he said, DARPA acceded to “pres­sure to show more mil­i­tary rel­e­vance.“
In 1983, basic research was close to 20 per­cent of Defense Department sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy spend­ing, notes Coalition for National Security Research co-​​chair Elaine McCusker. Now, that’s down to about 12 per­cent.
The National Academy of Sciences has been asked to con­duct the inves­ti­ga­tion. Information tech­nol­ogy pro­grams are con­sid­ered par­tic­u­larly sus­pect, our Senate source says. But con­tro­ver­sial DARPA projects in this area, like Total Information Awareness and LifeLog, will not be the focus on the inquiry.

June 9th, 2003 | Los Alamos and Labs | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.