Foundational Strategic Technologies and Systems

For decades, the United States has successfully countered the threats of competitor nations by harnessing advanced technologies to create exceedingly robust and capable military platforms. But as advanced technologies have become more readily available to adversaries on commercial markets, the Nation’s focus on ever more complex weapons systems has become not just a strength but also a weakness. Effective as they are, U.S. military systems today are often too expensive to procure in the quantities needed, and may take so long to develop that the electronic components they contain are obsolete by the time they become operational.

On Wednesday, June 10, DARPA will open general registration for what promises to be an extraordinary gathering:“Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum,” to be held September 9th through 11th in St. Louis.

Normal radios operate in kilohertz (kHz) and megahertz (MHz) frequencies, bandwidths corresponding to electromagnetic oscillations in the thousands and millions of cycles per second ranges, respectively. Upping the ante, cell phones and radar systems operate in the billions of cycles per second range—that is, gigahertz (GHz) frequencies. But no one has managed to push radiofrequency technology into the trillions of cycles per second, or Terahertz (THz), range. With the Terahertz (THz) Electronics Program, however, DARPA has begun to make it possible.

Open the hood of just about any electronic gadget and you probably will find one or more printed circuit boards (PCBs)—most often in a leaf green color—studded with processing, memory, data-relaying, graphics, and other types of chips and components, all interconnected with a labyrinth of finely embossed wiring. By challenging the technology community to integrate the collective functions hosted by an entire PCB onto a device the size of a single chip, DARPA’s newest program is making a bid to usher in a fresh dimension of technology miniaturization.

In March, DARPA officials first publicly floated plans for the Spectrum Collaboration Challenge, an initiative designed to ensure that the exponentially growing number of military and civilian wireless devices will have full access to the increasingly crowded electromagnetic spectrum. Today, with the Agency release of detailed postings about the competition’s architecture, rules, and two participation options for seeking one of the up to 30 available slots, SC2 is officially on.