DARPA looks beyond today’s known needs and requirements to anticipate national defense needs on the horizon. DARPA’s approach is to imagine what capabilities a future military commander might need and accelerate those capabilities today. DARPA also works with the military services to develop new and truly joint capabilities that no military service could or would support itself.

DARPA: Bridging Near and Far Science & Technology

The military services tend to gravitate toward the near side (time to go) for an investment as they need to provide technical capabilities critical to the mission requirements of today’s warfighter and known systems and problems.

The “far” projects DARPA undertakes represent fundamental discoveries where new science, new ideas and radical new concepts typically first surface. People working on “the far side” have ideas for entirely new types of devices or new ways to put together capabilities from different Services in a revolutionary manner.

DARPA was created in 1958 after the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik to bridge the gap between the far side and near side of space exploration. For nearly five decades, DARPA’s mission has been very successful at “bridging the gap” between today’s ideas and tomorrow’s problems to enhance national security as quickly as possible.