Neurdron world press

DARPA WATCH: The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is among the most successful and innovative programs the government funds – among the seemingly millions of disastrous federal boondoggles. Time and again it funds research that creates new initiatives that apply to the private sector. The Pentagon’s mad science agency has big plans for next year. Among them: crowd-sourcing military intelligence, creating an “immune system” for DOD networks, and even research that might one day lead to editing a soldier’s DNA; and also fool-proof new prosthetics and hypersonic flight. This is not health care run by the Post Office. Obama probably doesn’t even know that DARPA exists – it isn’t run by Acorn or the SEIU.

By Dennis Mullin

WILD PROJECTS: In the DARPA budget released last week, there are some wild new projects on tap. Military analysts are already overwhelmed by too much information. Instead of training more analysts or handing data over to computers, DARPA wants to improve how the military uses its intelligence info by turning it into an open call for contribution. The $13 million dollar project, called “Deep ISR Processing by Crowds,” looks “to harness the unique cognitive and creative abilities of large numbers of people to enhance dramatically the knowledge derived from ISR systems.”

According to Wired online Danger Room, Crowd sourcing is already used among businesses and other government agencies to generate more innovative ideas that draw on as many sources as possible. DARPA wants that innovation to take over individual analysis and decision-making: Novel frameworks will be developed to capture the experience base of users and systems to allow problem partitioning, quantitative confidence assessment, and validation in environments that may be partially compromised by adversaries.

SECURITY: When it comes to cyber security, DARPA’s taking inspiration from nature, with “Cyber Immune” -- a defense model for the Pentagon’s computing systems that are able to detect an attack fight back and even heal itself automatically to prevent subsequent infiltration.

The current model for cyber security, dubbed “perimeter defense,” uses firewalls that hackers try to break through. Once they make it inside, they’ve got free rein, and the compromised system is vulnerable to ongoing outside attacks until the firewall is rebuilt. Instead of technicians who patch holes as they find them, DARPA wants a system with the instincts to go it alone, and that “assume[s] security cannot be absolute, yet … can still defend itself in order to maintain its (possibly degraded) capabilities, and possibly even heal itself.”

GNOMES: DARPA is also living up to its innovative reputation, with ambitious plans to fast-track mastery over the human genome. DARPA has budgeted $7.5 million in hopes of “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.”

Editing DNA could have widespread implications, but DARPA seems most interested in two: microchip implants that restore senses and movement in traumatic injury patients, and the ongoing DARPA goal of boosting troop performance in the field: On the other end of the size scale, a primary goal is to apply microsystem techniques to soldier-protective biomedical systems.

One example is an in-canal hearing protection device that will provide enhanced hearing capabilities in some settings, but be able to instantly muffle loud sounds of weapons fire. This one example will improve inter-personnel communications and at the same time drastically reduce the incidence of hearing loss in combat situations. For these examples and many more, the goal is to bring exceptionally potent technical approaches to bear on biological and biomedical applications where their capabilities will be significant force multipliers for the DoD.

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FAIL-PROOF PROSTHETICS: In the “protect the troops” department, better prosthetic devices have been a major Pentagon priority for years. Now, they want to make the devices longer-lasting, more reliable and better able to integrate directly with the human brain. DARPA is launching the next phase of its Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, which was started in 2000 with the goal of creating a fully-functioning, neurally-controlled human limb within five years.

Since then, the agency has made plenty of progress. They’re currently doing human trials of the DEKA Arm, a prosthetic that allows users to complete day-to-day tasks with unprecedented ease. That arm uses a joystick-style interface, with a user tapping commands with their toes to trigger movements with the arm. At Johns Hopkins, DARPA-funded researchers are still working on an arm that uses a 100-sensor neural interface to create a brain-body meld much like what’s inherent in natural limbs.

But although DARPA had hoped to have a fully-functional, neuro-prosthetic model ready by 2010, the agency’s researchers have yet to master the integration of human neural pathways with artificial platforms. For one, neural-recording interfaces are notoriously short-lived, with a life-span of around two years, and they don’t extract adequate information to yield seamless movement from brain to neurons to limbs

MOTIONS: A seemingly simple motion, like using an arm to eat, is actually a series of thousands of movements, sensations, cues and brain-neuron communications. Right now, DARPA prototypes can transmit 500 events per second. According to the agency, that’s not nearly enough. So DARPA is launching a new program, in hopes of creating not only a neurally-controlled limb, but one that has a 70-year lifespan and flawless integration with the human body.

It’s a three-year, three-phase initiative that’s first and foremost about failure. DARPA wants to know why neural-recording interfaces are apt to break down or suffer lagging performance, and how researchers can predict that failure sooner -- before an amputee is stuck with an arm or leg that’s simply stopped working. They’re asking researchers to figure out where vulnerabilities can be detected.

DARPA also wants researchers to determine which neural models are the most effective, though they already anticipates that successful prototypes will use “implanted cortical microelectrodes,” to yield the best results. In other words, brain implants that directly communicate with the nervous system. That entails another hurdle: a non-invasive method of monitoring and repairing the devices. Revolutionizing the state of prosthetic models hasn’t been easy, and DARPA notes that “significant risk may hinder the achievement of all programmatic milestones.”

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HYPERSONIC FLIGHT: DARPA is also planning an April test flight for a prototype of a hypersonic weapon that -- in theory, could cross the Pacific Ocean in under two hours. In a solicitation issued last week, DARPA said it was looking to charter a U.S.-flag vessel to help collect telemetry for the upcoming test of a Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 (HTV-2). According to the solicitation, an un-powered HTV-2 will be launched on a booster rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and glide to a target site in the Marshall Islands, sometime between April 20 and April 27.

It’s the first public announcement of a flight test originally scheduled for 2009.

The flight test is part of the Falcon Program, a DARPA-Air Force project to develop the tech that could lead to a reusable hypersonic vehicle that could take off and land like a plane. It would carry 12,000 pounds of payload over 9,000 nautical miles in less than two hours.

BLACKSWIFT: Falcon is related to another effort, dubbed Blackswift, that was supposed to lead to a test aircraft that could take off from a conventional runway, cruise at Mach 6 and land back on a runway. However, Congress, in its infinite unwisdom, chopped Fiscal 2009 funds for the project, and DARPA decided not to move ahead with plans for the reusable space plane. This upcoming test is supposed to demonstrate the thermal protection systems and aerodynamic controls of the HTV-2.

If all goes according to plan, an HTV-2 will be launched by a Minotaur IV Lite rocket from Vandenberg, separate from the launch vehicle, then follow a hypersonic glide trajectory to an impact area in the ocean near Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll, where the Air Force also tests ICBM reentry vehicles. According to the DARPA solicitation, the ship will be hired to transport, deploy and retrieve a set of nine impact-scoring rafts, as well as telemetry equipment that will help track the HTV-2 in its final seconds of flight.