Munitions

In addition to the six technical offices that manage the Agency’s research portfolio, DARPA operates the Adaptive Execution Office , a support office chartered to accelerate the transition of game-changing DARPA technologies into Department of Defense capabilities. AEO provides DARPA with robust connections to the warfighter community and assists the Agency with the planning and execution of technology demonstrations and field trials to promote adoption by the Services.

The mission of DARPA/TTO is to provide or prevent strategic and tactical surprise with very high-payoff, high-risk development and demonstration of revolutionary new platforms in Ground Systems, Maritime (Surface and Undersea) Systems, Air Systems, and Space Systems.

The mission of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office (TTO) is to provide or prevent strategic and tactical surprise with very high-payoff, high-risk development and demonstration of revolutionary new platforms in Ground Systems, Maritime (Surface and Undersea) Systems, Air Systems, and Space Systems.

Adversaries’ sophisticated air defense systems can make it difficult for current air- and surface-launched anti-ship missiles to hit their targets at long range. To engage specific enemy warships from beyond the reach of counter-fire systems, warfighters may require launching multiple missiles or employing overhead targeting assets such as radar-equipped planes or Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites—resources that may not always be available. To help address these challenges, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) are collaborating on the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) program, which successfully launched its first prototype on August 27.

An unmanned target ship demonstrates the effects of the second successful flight test of a Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) prototype, conducted November 12 off the coast of Southern California. The test reinforced the results of LRASM’s first successful free-flight transition test (FFTT) on August 27, which verified the prototype’s flight characteristics and assessed subsystem and sensor performance. Both tests achieved all of their objectives after the prototypes used their respective onboard sensors to detect, engage and hit the moving 260-foot target ships with inert warheads.