Darpa's Processes for Creating New Programs
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DARPA’S PROCESSES FOR CREATING NEW PROGRAMS A Report to NEDO David W. Cheney Richard Van Atta March 2016 (Revised May 2016) Technology Policy International, LLC www.technopoli.net DARPA’s Processes for Creating New Programs p. ii PREFACE The study underlying this report was commissioned by the Washington, D.C., office of Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and was conducted by Technology Policy International, LLC The opinions expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of NEDO or other institutions with which the authors are affiliated. The authors of the report were David Cheney and Richard Van Atta, a consultant to TPI. Christopher Hill and George Heaton reviewed the report in draft and made useful contributions. Patrick Windham recused himself from involvement in this report. David W. Cheney George R. Heaton, Jr. Managing Partner Partner Silver Spring, MD Boston, MA [email protected] [email protected] Christopher T. Hill Patrick Windham Partner Partner Knoxville, TN Arlington, VA [email protected] [email protected] DARPA’s Processes for Creating New Programs p. iii TPI PARTNERS David W. Cheney is a consultant and the former Director of the Center for Science, Technology and Economic Development at SRI International, where his work focused on planning and evaluating science, technology, and innovation programs and institutions, primarily in the United States and Middle East. He is also an adjunct professor at George Mason University. Before joining SRI in 1998, he was a senior executive in the U.S. Department of Energy, serving as director of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board and advisor to the Deputy Secretary on industrial partnerships and national laboratories. He previously was a senior associate with the Council on Competitiveness, and an analyst with the Congressional Research Service. He has also held positions with the Internet Policy Institute, the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association, the Competitiveness Policy Council, and the Institute for Policy Science at Saitama University in Japan. He has a PhD in public policy from George Mason University, a MS in Technology and Policy from MIT and a BS in Geology & Biology from Brown University. Christopher T. Hill is Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and former Vice Provost for Research at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He was a Senior Fellow at SRI International from 2011 to early 2016. After earning three degrees in chemical engineering and practicing in that field at Uniroyal Corporation and Washington University in St. Louis, he has devoted more than four decades to practice, research and teaching in science and technology policy, including service at MIT, the Office of Technology Assessment, the Congressional Research Service, the National Academy of Engineering and the RAND Critical Technologies Institute. George R. Heaton, Jr. is a member of the faculty at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and an independent consultant in science and technology policy, environmental policy and law. Trained as a lawyer, Mr. Heaton has been on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has worked widely for public and private technical and policy institutions in the U.S. and abroad. Maintaining extensive professional and personal relations in Japan, Mr. Heaton was a Visiting Professor at Saitama University in 1986-87 and the First Foreign Scholar of the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1989-90. Patrick H. Windham is a consultant and university lecturer on science and technology policy. From 1999 to 2012 was a Lecturer in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University and more recently has taught at the University of California’s Washington, DARPA’s Processes for Creating New Programs p. iv DC, center and the University of Maryland. From 1984 until 1997 he served as a Senior Professional Staff Member for the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate. He helped Senators oversee and draft legislation for several major civilian science and technology agencies and focused particularly on issues of science, technology, and U.S. industrial competitiveness. Mr. Windham received an A.B. from Stanford University and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. CONSULTING AUTHOR Richard Van Atta, is a consultant to TPI, an adjunct research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), and an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Prior to this year, Dr. Van Atta was a research staff member at IDA, where over the past 30 years he led research programs on defense technology development and defense acquisition, as well as studies on innovation, manufacturing policy, and technology transition. At IDA he led projects for DARPA documenting its programs and their impacts. While at IDA he was at the Science and Technology Institute from 2006-2010 working for the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the White House. For the last ten years he has taught a course on "Emerging Technology and Security" at Georgetown University. Prior to IDA he worked in private consulting in defense and national security. He has a PhD in Political Science from Indiana University and a Bachelors of Arts from the University of California. DARPA’s Processes for Creating New Programs p. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During this project we have benefited greatly from discussion on various DARPA programs with Ray Perrault, Marco Slusarczuk, Andrew Yang, Douglas Cochran, and Stuart Wolf. The report also benefits from many studies and conversations with colleagues over the years in the authors’ prior work experiences primarily at IDA and SRI International. Any errors and omissions are the responsibility of the authors. DARPA’s Processes for Creating New Programs p. vi CONTENTS Preface _______________________________________________________________ ii TPI Partners ___________________________________________________________ iii Consulting Author_______________________________________________________ iv Acknowledgements _____________________________________________________ v Executive Summary _____________________________________________________ 1 Introduction ___________________________________________________________ 4 General Framework and Typical patterns of program development ______________ 7 Case Studies of the Development of DARPA Programs ________________________ 10 Have Blue (Stealth) _________________________________________________________ 11 Assault Breaker (Standoff Precision Strike) ______________________________________ 17 Amber / Predator (High Altitude Long Endurance UAVs) ___________________________ 21 Optoelectronics Program ____________________________________________________ 26 High Definition Systems _____________________________________________________ 32 Spintronics (Quantum Computing) _____________________________________________ 37 Personalized Assistant That Learns (PAL) ________________________________________ 41 Topological Data Analysis ____________________________________________________ 44 Revolutionizing Prosthetics ___________________________________________________ 46 Findings, Conclusions, and Key Observations ________________________________ 49 Process of Program Development _____________________________________________ 49 Roles of Program Managers __________________________________________________ 50 Additional Observations _____________________________________________________ 51 Concluding Thoughts ___________________________________________________ 52 DARPA’s Processes for Creating New Programs p. 1 DARPA’S PROCESS FOR CREATING NEW PROGRAMS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This study addresses the process by which the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) develops the ideas for its programs. DARPA is widely noted for having made investments that have led to many influential defense and dual use technologies, such as the Internet, many elements of modern computers, and stealth aircraft. While DARPA has been a highly successful model of supporting technology development, its processes with regard to selecting its R&D programs are not well understood. The study is built on 9 case studies of the development of DARPA programs. These cases span a range of time periods and types of programs, and represent several DARPA offices. They are not, however, a random selection of DARPA programs. They tend to be well-known cases (which tend to be ones with a successful outcomes), and ones for which information was more readily available, either through previous studies or where the authors had access to key participants in the case. Information on classified programs is only available after the programs have been declassified, so the cases on these programs tend to be older. The nine cases are: • Have Blue (Stealth) was a program in the Tactical Technology Office (TTO) starting in 1976 that led to the original prototype “stealth” aircraft with greatly reduced radar, infrared, acoustic and visual signatures. This led to a new generation of aircraft that represented a major increase in military capabilities. The idea for the program began with requests from the Department of Defense. • Assault Breaker was a program that demonstrated a concept for finding, hitting and destroying targets on a battlefield from a distance