Aviation Week February 19, 2009
Darpa Loses Longest-Serving Director
By Graham Warwick
The new director of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is likely to come under pressure to change funding style. Critics say the organization has become too focused on short-term results under departing chief Tony Tether.
Darpa’s longest-serving director, Tether had expected to stay in place until replaced, but last week was asked by the Obama administration to leave by Feb. 20, before a successor has been named.
Potential replacements include Lisa Porter, a former NASA associate administrator who now heads the Central Intelligence Agency’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Pete Worden, director of NASA Ames Research Center.
Others include Mark Lewis, former U.S. Air Force chief scientist; Jane Alexander, deputy director of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency; and Amy Alving, SAIC’s chief technology officer and former Darpa office director.
Tether, who has led Darpa since 2001, has been criticized for focusing on research projects that can produce results within a year or two. Programs are funded only in short phases tied to demonstrating results by strict go/no-go milestones.
Critics argue that Darpa should return to its previous management style, in which individual office directors were given great leeway to pursue ideas and the agency conducted longer-term, larger-scale projects tackling strategic defense challenges.
“The impact of his funding style has been dramatic in the way research has been hampered in its ability to break new ground and open up new and fertile areas,” says Leonard Kleinrock, who was fundamental in developing Arpanet, the forerunner of the Internet.
Kleinrock believes Darpa’s short-term, applications-oriented and highly competitive funding is “deleterious and stifling to the innovative process.” He fears Tether’s legacy will affect researchers “for some years to come, and that may have serious consequences.”
One critic close to Darpa says the agency’s focus on “bridging the gap” between advanced research and fielding technology is too narrow and simplistic and has led to a lower risk, less ambitious mind-set. He believes the agency should refocus on finding fundamental “game-changing” concepts to meet security challenges.
John Pike of globalsecurity.org says that until larger questions about Afghanistan and the defense budget are resolved, it will be hard for the agency to figure out how to be relevant. “If you look over the past half century, Darpa has transformed itself so many times that it could move in just about any direction,” he says.
© Copyright 2009, The McGraw-Hill Companies
