Position, Navigation and Timing

Since its inception in 1992, DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) has helped create and prevent strategic surprise through investments in compact microelectronic components such as microprocessors, Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and photonic devices. MTO’s revolutionary work applying advanced capabilities in areas such as wide-band gap materials, phased array radars, high-energy lasers and infrared imaging have helped the United States establish and maintain technological superiority for more than two decades.

Since its inception in 1992, DARPA’S Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) has helped create and prevent strategic surprise through investments in compact microelectronic components such as microprocessors, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and photonic devices. MTO’s revolutionary work applying advanced capabilities in areas such as wide-band gap materials, phased array radars, high-energy lasers and infrared imaging have helped the United States establish and maintain technological superiority for more than two decades.

DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office (STO) is focused on technologies that enable fighting as a network to increase military effectiveness, cost leverage, and adaptability. STO's areas of interest include: Battle Management, Command and Control; Communications and Networks; Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance; Electronic Warfare; Positioning, Navigation, and Timing; and Foundational Strategic Technologies and Systems.

With roots extending to the DARPA-supported Transit program—a Navy submarine-geopositioning system originating in the early years of the Space Age at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory—what became today’s world-changing GPS technology began to take modern form in 1973. That is when the Department of Defense called for the creation of a joint program office to develop the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System.

Early GPS receivers were bulky, heavy devices. In 1983, DARPA set out to miniaturize them, leading to a much broader adoption of GPS capability.