futuristic technology

Something useful comes out of Defense R&D after all (actually this is an understatement). GPS and ARPANET were military projects that eventually found extremely important and useful civilian use.

DARPA is an amazing agency. They fund really advanced technologies that are several generations ahead of anything available commercially. My first hand encounter came in the early 90s when I visited Fort Belvoir, as a graduate student with my advisor. At that time, using thermal images, the goal was to identify and classify tanks (based on heat signatures) as NATO or Warsaw (friend or foe) at distances of upto 2 miles!!

Fastforward almost 20 years. Now they are working on aircraft that can fly at Mach 20 (that’s right not a typo)!! So, they can get to any part of the world from the USA, in about an hour. For an interesting interview with Regina Dugan of DARPA check out this article.

The interview was from the All Things Digital Conference. More articles can be found here.