Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), U.S. government agency administered by the Department of Defense (see Defense, United States Department of ). It was established in 1958, in reaction to the successful launch of Sputnik by the USSR, as the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Although DARPA is only one of many military agencies administering research and development funds, it has been crucial to the development of several important technologies, especially military computers and the Internet. It funds a high percentage of all artificial intelligence research in the United States, as well as significant projects in microelectronics, materials, and behavioral science.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency A military agency of the US government which funded the forerunner of the Internet in the 1970s. The network that it funded was the main focus of a research project to replace vulnerable telephone command and control centres with a computer network which had redundant data paths and could, consequently, not be destroyed by one of its nodes being attacked. The network was the subject of research and experimentation which led to the development of many of the technologies that are used today on the Internet such as the INTERNET PROTOCOL and the TRANSMISSION CONTROL PROTOCOL. The agency is usually referred to as DARPA.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA an agency of the Department of Defense established on February 7, 1958, as the first U. S. response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, and charged with maintaining the United States's lead in developing and applying state-of-the-art technologies to military capabilities. Originally called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the name was changed on March 23, 1972, to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and it became a separate defense agency under the secretary of defense. President Bill Clinton renamed the agency as the Advanced Research Projects Agency again on February 22, 1993, in his strategy paper, “Technology for America's Economic Growth, A New Direction to Build Economic Strength.” On February 10, 1996, Public Law 104–106, under Title IX of the Fiscal Year 1996 Defense Authorization Act, the agency's name was changed to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Although the Agency reports directly to the secretary of defense, it is independent of the military research and development establishment and was intended to provide a challenge to conventional military thinking and approaches. The DoD, understanding the value of an independent R&D group that investigates ideas and approaches considered too risky by the traditional R&D establishment, has protected the organization from outside influences, and the freedom to act quickly has paid well in terms of revolutionary military abilities. Also called Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).