Beyond Siri: DARPA’s BOLT

Johnny 5

It’s 2020. A US soldier sits down with a village sheikh, with an unusual robot in tow. The sheikh greets him courteously, respectfully, in flowing Arabic. At the appropriate time, the robot offers the same speech in English. The soldier nods, speaks, and gives a command, whereupon the robot offers dependable translation that’s even customized to the local dialect. Offshore, an intelligence analyst sorts through a combination of intercepted emails, recorded cell phone conversations, and document archives, looking for patterns and connections. She’s not fluent in Arabic, but the same technology used by the soldier is providing usable translations for her searches – asking her questions as needed, and helped by embedded clarifications and tags.

Thanks to a 2003 DARPA program, The world got to know Siri, the show-stealing component of Apple’s iPhone 4S. DARPA’s 2011 BOLT program aims to take the next step, from a silicon intermediary between man and machine to an intermediary between people. Even as it also provides a powerful back-end translation system for traditional intelligence tasks. It’s one of a family of ongoing translation research efforts, all aiming to solve a persistent and expensive problem for the US military.

Up to $150M to Help DARPA’s Tactical Tech Programs

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Tactical Technology Office has 3 major focus areas. Advanced Platforms does a lot of work in robotics, from load carriers that walk like a dog (LS3) to UAVs designed to stay up for months (Vulture). They also do work in areas like hypersonic vehicles, however, and helicopter rotors that work better by changing their shape. Advanced Space Systems deals with programs like MOIRE flat-lens surveillance, and F6 fractional/clustered satellites. Advanced Weapons Systems covers projects like the naval LRASM missile, the Triple Target Terminator missile for fighters, or guided small-caliber sniper rounds (EXACTO).

In October 2011, US Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) Atlantic in Charleston, SC issued a multiple-award contract for FY 2012, whose options could drive it to $150 million, and extend work through FY 2014.

DARPA Looking to Harness RNA for Vaccines

RNA vs. DNA

In September 2011, the RN Armor Vax international consortium in Orlando, FL received a $17.3 million technology investment agreement from US DARPA. Their research and development program is designed to “identify, investigate, and develop candidate RNA vaccines against infectious disease.” Work will be performed in Orlando, FL (19.59%); Lyon, France (11.93%); Tubingen, Germany (56.62%); and Nantes, France (11.86%). The work is expected to be completed by September 2015. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency manages the contract (HR0011-11-3-0001).

RNA is very useful for synthesizing proteins. This has led to research into ways of using it as a trigger, so that cells synthesize very specific proteins that will kill tumor cells, trigger correct immune responses, or perform other related functions. Dendritic immune cells, for instance, which stimulate the production of defensive killer T-cells, are a useful vector for RNA codes that direct the production of specific proteins. Another interesting function is RNA-enhanced vaccines using “silencing RNA,” which shuts down specific proteins in the cells that process a vaccine. That lets the vaccine offer more of an antibody response, which is very useful for parasitic infections, or create more of a cellular-kill response for viral infections.

DARPA’s MOIRE: Video Scud Hunts from Space

MOIRE concept

In physics, a moire pattern is an interference pattern created, for example, when two grids are overlaid at an angle, or when they have slightly different mesh sizes. It’s an appropriate name for DARPA’s Membrane Optic Imager Real-Time Exploitation (MOIRE) project, which aims to use diffractive optic membranes to conduct tactical video surveillance from space. That’s very useful when looking at territory where an intruding UAV is likely to be shot down, or when conducting operations to find, say, mobile SCUD missiles within a large potential area.

Making that happen involves a 20-meter diameter optic membrane surveying an area of more than 10 x 10 km at least once a second, with ground resolution better than 2.5 meters, and the ability to detect moving vehicles. Field of regard would be larger, of course, at 10 million square kilometers that could be covered from geosynchronous orbit. Finally, satellite cost also has to come in at under $500 million per copy. How hard could all that be? Hard enough for DARPA, apparently…

• DARPA’s MOIRE Program
  
• Contracts & Key Events
  
• Additional Readings
  

Harvard Gets $6.7M to Model Virus Evolution

Aug 30/11: The President and Fellows of Harvard College in Cambridge, MA receive a $6.7 million cost reimbursement contract for research to develop technologies and approaches to predict natural viral evolution. We’d all benefit from that, but we’re still likely to be surprised by what actually happens.

Work will be performed in Cambridge, MA (39%); Laurel, MD (37%); Baltimore, MD (9%); Ann Arbor, MI (9%); and Pittsburgh, PA (5%). Work is expected to be completed by Aug 31/12. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) manages the contract (HR0011-11-C-0093).

Small Is Beautiful: US Military Explores Use of Microsatellites

TacSat-1 Concept
(click to view larger)

At a time when defense budgets are being cut, the era of the multi-billion dollar military satellite program might be over. Witness the fate of the massive $12 billion TSAT program, which was shut down in 2009. As a much cheaper alternative, governments are exploring the possibility of using microsatellites to perform many of the functions currently performed by expensive large satellite systems: GPS navigation, communication, surveillance, and earth imagery.

At a 10th of the cost of their larger cousins, microsatellites are much easier sell to budget conscious procurement officers. They are much cheaper and faster to build and launch. For key military missions, however, their reliability and longevity are an issue. They might be cheaper, but if the military has to use 10 times as many to do the job of traditional satellites, would that be a cost savings?

This DID Spotlight article will focus on the US military’s microsatellite development and launch programs, as well as the Army’s development of nanosatellites for battlefield communication, and take a brief look at the problem of space debris.

• Microsatellites: Definitions and Technologies
  
• Pentagon’s TacSat Program
  
• TacSat-2 and Beyond [updated]
  
• One MiDSTEP for DARPA
  
• Army’s Nanosatellites: Smaller Is Better
  
• Tracking Space Debris
  
• Future: Faster, Better, Smaller, Cheaper
  
• Key Contacts
  
• Additional Readings
  

WNAN: DARPA’s Idea for Next-Generation Soldier Networks

Not ideal.

At present, many soldiers don’t have communications radios because the hardware is too expensive. Buying 2-way radios from Radio Shack before deployments solved that problem for some soldiers, but insecure communications created others. On the high end, the US military’s JTRS program is expected to create radios that are much better at working together, and much easier to upgrade. As one might expect, however, the hardware appears to be on track to be more expensive, in return for that improved performance.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Wireless Network after Next (WNaN) program aims to shift the approach used to design these military wireless networks. It also intends to use inexpensive, high-volume, commercial off the shelf hardware components. They would be combined with adaptive wireless network software operating over densely-deployed, low-cost wireless nodes, with the aim of putting a reliable communications radio into the hands of every soldier. How could that work?

Rapid Fire Evening 2011-06-02: Blast Mitigation

• The UK’s Chief of the General Staff warns that the British Army faces “serious decline” if the government does not fulfill its pledge to increase defense spending after the 2015 general election. Speaking at at the Royal United Services Institute’s Land Warfare Conference General Sir Peter Wall said spending on the army would “require a real-terms growth in the latter part of the decade” in order to avoid such a decline.

• The Deputy Director of the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation says Russia and the United States will set up a maintenance center for Afghanistan’s Mil Mi-17 helicopters.

• Israel deploys an Iron Dome rocket interceptor outside a town 4km from the Gaza Strip.

• Skydex Technologies signs multiple contracts with the US Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) to provide its blast mitigating Convoy Deck product for about 1,000 M-ATV vehicles. 

• DARPA’s crowd-sourced design crusade comes to the aircraft industry in the shape of a fly-off competition. UAVForge has been launched to demonstrate crowd-sourced design of small, persistent perch-and-stare unmanned aircraft. 

• As the Pentagon tries to save manpower, USAF proposes building an ‘intelligent robopallet’ to load cargo onto aircraft.

Hypersonic Rocket-Plane Program Inches Along, Stalls

FALCON HTVs

The path toward a hypersonic space plane has been a slow one, filled with twists and turns one would expect given the technological leap involved. Speeds of Mach 8+ place tremendous heat and resistance stresses on a craft. Building a vehicle that is both light enough to achieve the speeds desired at reasonable cost, and robust enough to survive those speeds, is no easy task.

Despite the considerable engineering challenges ahead, the potential of a truly hypersonic aircraft for reconnaissance, global strike/ transport, and low-cost access to near-space and space is a compelling goal on both engineering and military grounds. The question, as always, will be balancing the need for funding to prove out new designs and concepts, with risk management that ensures limited exposure if it becomes clear that the challenge is still too great. In October 2008, the US Congress decided that FALCON/Blackswift had reached those limits. That decision led to the program’s cancellation, though some activities will continue.

USN Turns to Q for TRITON, to Improve Laser Sub Communications

SSN-721: Calling Chicago…

DARPA’s TRITON program plans to demonstrate duplex connectivity at submarine keel depths significantly greater than what has been demonstrated in the green, achieving area coverage and bit rates that satisfy existing Navy requirements. On Sept 24/10, QinetiQ North America Operations, LLC received a $31.8 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for Phase 1 of the TRITON/ Tactical Relay Information Network program. Work will be performed in Waltham, MA (43%); Ypsilanti, MI (7%); Herndon, VA (30%); La Jolla, CA (1%); Anaheim, CA (18%); Redondo Beach, CA (1%); and Los Angeles, CA (1%), and is expected to be complete by November 2011.