English subtitles for clip: File:03 - The Post-Soviet Years 1989 - Present 2008 (DARPA history).ogv

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[ Silence ]

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[ Music ]

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>> DARPA, shaping the future,
creating opportunities

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for new capabilities - strategically,
tactically.

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1989, George Herbert Walker Bush was President.

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After 28 years, the Berlin
Wall is open to the west.

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The fall of Soviet Communism
unleashes a new security environment,

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one of international instability.

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DARPA director, Dr. Craig Fields.

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>> The Soviet Union fell in that exact period,
wasn't so clear they weren't going to reform,

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it was a lot of anxiety about
the fact that they might reform.

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And nuclear proliferation, biological warfare,
chemical warfare, radiological attacks, EMP.

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There are any number of things that are of the
traditional sort, and then you deal with cases

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of things that are not quite war like
insurgency and occupation in Iraq today.

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>> In 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait.

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Our capabilities unleashed in
Desert Storm were the culmination

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of DARPA's technological prowess.

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Stealth aircraft delivering precision ordinance,
destroyed the Iraqi army in just 42 days.

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Dr. Victor Reis became director in 1990.

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>> It was a time of considerable turmoil.

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I realized after a short period of time
that this was the most important...

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thing that DARPA could be doing, was
in the information technology area.

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>> DARPA saw the opportunity to
incorporate real battles from Desert Storm

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to enhance computer simulated training.

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>> One of the things that the applications

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of this packet switching was a program
called SIMNET, simulation networking.

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You could simulate about size of a battle,
where people could sit in what looked

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like little tanks, but they
were really work stations.

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And so they could sit and look out
and see a terrain and see people,

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or other tanks or other things coming at them.

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So you could sit in a room, not unlike this one,
and play a whole battle out and learn that way.

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>> Secretary of Defense Dick Chaney saw
the simulation and wanted more like it.

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Simulation technology transitioned to the
services, becoming key to troop training.

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Dr. Gary Minden became director in 1991.

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>> The first Gulf war was
underway just over when I arrived

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in the early days of my tenure, and that...

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less from the lessons learned part of
you that sets the tone for the agency.

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>> The monolithic adversary was gone.

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But now...

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several smaller complex conflicts arose
from the broken pieces of the Soviet empire.

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>> I think a military person would tell you
all I need is perfect information on the enemy,

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and I can take care of the problem.

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Well obviously you never have perfect, but
can DARPA help you make it better than it is?

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And we focused a great deal on sensors
and techniques to get better intelligence

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and reconnaissance of the
battlefield or potential adversaries.

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>> Yugoslavia was spiraling into war.

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DARPA was asked to find a solution

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to the operational challenges
of fast moving urban warfare.

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Director Larry Lynn.

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>> Probably the thing that, the
external thing that drove most

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of our thinking was the Bosnia
situation at the time.

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There was a real need to
improve the communications

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and the information exploitation for Bosnia.

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>> DARPA responded with a Bosnia command
and control augmentation initiative,

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connecting deployed forces
with assets in the states.

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Another remnant of the Cold War
was raising security concerns.

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The Soviets had maintained a
robust biological warfare program.

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Now with a diminished military budget,

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there was chance these germ warfare secrets
could extend beyond Russia's borders,

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and proliferate in the wrong hands.

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Lynn and a DARPA team traveled to
Moscow to learn what they could to start

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up a biological warfare defense
program at DARPA.

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>> It became apparent that biological warfare
was rising to the level of a lot of concern,

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and that DOD had very little
capability in biology.

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And so we started a hefty biological program.

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>> Dr. Frank Fernandez was
appointed director in 1998.

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>> We focused on bio-defense,
defense gets biological attack,

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and the second one was the
defense against cyber attack.

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>> In the military area back
then, a precision strike

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against moving targets was a very hard problem.

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Predator in Kosovo as a situation where we got
a call from some operational people saying,

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we found out that Predator is accurately
tracking the movement of some of these people

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that we want to shoot at in real time.

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The problem was that the camera on Predator
was, had to look out at very low angle,

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low grazing angles, so that there
was a lot of distortion in the scene

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and you couldn't register what
you saw with an accuracy enough

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to essentially use that to target a vehicle.

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>> DARPA saw the moving target problem
- integrating multiple sensors sources

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to direct weapons to a moving target.

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DARPA was pushing core sciences too.

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>> At that time we were learning how to do
integration of multiple components on a chip,

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integrating optics and electronics on 1 single
chip, putting a lot of transistors on a chip;

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numbers getting close to a
billion transistors on a chip.

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>> In 2001 George W. Bush became President.

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9/11 came just 8 months later.

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With the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq,
DARPA responded to the national security threats

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as it had throughout it's 50 year
history by combining technologies

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in new ways, and imaginative field solutions.

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The war in Iraq provided insights as
to what future operations might entail,

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the urban nature of the war, the harsh
conditions, the scattered asymmetrical enemy.

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DARPA believed part of the answer
was unmanned ground vehicles

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that could save lives on the battlefield.

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Could anyone build an unmanned vehicle that
could autonomously travel long distances?

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To accelerate research and development
of robot cars, DARPA held a contest.

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They called it the Grand Challenge.

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2004 - the first DARPA Grand Challenge.

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The robots vehicles had to navigate a 150
mile course through the Mojave Desert.

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None of the contestants made
it more than 7 miles.

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2005 - the second Grand Challenge.

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132 miles through the desert.

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5 teams made it across the
finish line, an amazing feat.

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>> The check goes to Stanley.

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[ Applause ]

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>>DARPA plays a major role in sponsoring
the development of our defense technology.

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The agency has transitioned stealth
bombers, armed with precision weapons,

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developed network battlefield
simulations for training, improved sensors

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and reconnaissance capabilities,
deployed Predator and Global Hawk,

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developed new biological and chemical defense
strategies, advanced computer technology,

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and stimulated robot vehicle developments.

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Impressive, but barely scratching
the surface of things to come.

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Space, 1 of DARPA's original frontiers.

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In the future we will be defending
more and more on satellites,

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for both commercial and military communications.

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DARPA is working to protect these assets
and provide new capabilities in space.

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In an increasingly complex world, with 1 eye
on the immediate needs of national securiy,

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and the other anticipating future
events, DARPA will continue

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to create even more technological advances and
technological surprise for the next 50 years.

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[ Music ]