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2. "Uncle Sam Wants You!"

Actually, I didn't join the Army, but I did take a break from my academic career to join the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense. This is an organization unique within the Federal government consisting of some of the hardest working technical staff, supported with the biggest budgets for research and development. This tiny agency of less than 150 Program Managers had an FY95 Presidential Budget of approximately $2.5 Billion. And I have never worked as hard or for as long hours as I did during my two years at ARPA-and that includes graduate school and life as an untenured faculty member.

ARPA was established in the wake of the Sputnik "disaster" for American science and engineering. Its mission has since been to insure that America avoids future technological surprise by her military-and increasingly economic-adversaries. It is little known that ARPA ran the early space program, before the establishment of NASA. ARPA oversees extensive research programs in remote sensing, stealth technology, and smart weapons. However, at least in our academic circles, ARPA is best know for its long term investments in the underlying electronic and computer systems technologies. These have seeded the development of major industries in packet switched communications networks, the Internet, time sharing, computer graphics, workstations, UNIX, computer-aided design software, high performance computing, and the list continues. These developments were justified to the Pentagon brass by their contribution to ARPA's defense missions: world dominating command and control systems for the military.

ARPA's mission was well articulated by Dr. Gary Denman, APRA's Director until earlier this year: This statement reflects the Clinton-Gore administration's priorities with respect to the conversion of defense industries. There is a strong emphasis on so-called "dual use" technology development: technologies with application in both the commercial and defense sectors. The current Congress has different priorities, and there has been a re-emphasis on technologies that meet military needs on the one hand, and which address basic science on the other. Fortunately, the Joint Chiefs have an understanding of the potential advantages of advanced information technologies for supporting the America's warfighting capabilities, ingrained by the successes in the Gulf War. It remains to be seen how this will affect ARPA's research mission in the near future. [5].

The keys to ARPA's success are its unique non-bureaucratic culture and its commitment to long-term projects. Its organizational culture grants technically oriented program managers substantial latitude in formulating their research and development programs.[6]. Occasional failure is expected-it is a maxim at ARPA that if some projects do not fail, then the agency is not investing in enough high risk ideas. The program managers play a unique role as brokers between Defense customers for technology and the research community that is developing the new technologies. To keep the ideas and enthusiasm of the program managers fresh, the agency has always been characterized by relatively high turnover: an ARPA assignment is a "tour," not a career. For me, two years immersed in this intensive environment were more than enough.

One of my more memorable ARPA experiences was the briefing I gave to then Deputy Secretary of Defense John Deutsch. He requested a review of several big ticket ARPA programs, including High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC), as a prelude to a budget cutting drill. I felt that I had twenty minutes to lose a $100 million of core computer system research funding! Fortunately, the presentation went well, and the only tough question I received was what happened to Thinking Machines. Another colleague at ARPA was not so lucky. After showing Secretary Deutsch a particular example of whiz-bang technology, his response was "Am I supposed to be impressed by this?" This is not the kind of response you want to get in a high stakes briefing like this!

The second key to the agency's success is its provision of substantial support over extended periods of time in order to achieve truly significant results. The focus is on teams developing proof-of-concept and early prototype systems. Much of the research is DoD budget category 6.2, so-called "applied research." It is not uncommon for ARPA take on projects that cost tens of millions of dollars (or more). The first stealth aircraft prototype is one notable example of a breakthrough technology.[7]. This stands in stark contrast to the 6.1 "basic research" pursued by such DoD organizations as the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Air Force Scientific Research Office (AFSRO). The latter fund mostly small single investigator grants in the same spirit as National Science Foundation (NSF). And they have suffered significant cuts by the budget ax.

ARPA is world-renowned for its research programs in information technology. These have stimulated most of the advances in computing and communications technology over the last several decades. A common question at ARPA, called by some the "twenty year criterion," was phrased as "what will be the technology developments that we will be proud of when people look back twenty years from now." ARPA has left its mark on scalable computing systems, intelligent systems, networking technologies (wireless, optical), and advanced software development. Many of these will provide the critical underlying ubiquitous computing capabilities for the National Information Infrastructure (NII): telecommunications, databases, advanced computer systems for information access in the 21st century.

So it should come as no surprise that the Clinton-Gore Administration would turn to ARPA to help it get "wired" into the National Information Infrastructure. And that is where the adventure really begins.

Footnotes

5. A major reorganization of ARPA has recently taken place. See http://www.arpa.mil for the latest details.
6. It offered the perfect playground for someone like me, interested in understanding long term technical directions.
7. We once received mail from the ARPA Comptroller asking whether anyone knew about a Boeing aircraft, as its invoice had just come in. There were several e-mail responses along the lines of "That's stealth technology for you-did you lose the airplane in the parking lot?"
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Randy H. Katz, randy@cs.Berkeley.edu, Last Updated: 21 December 95