Skip to main content

7 ambitious DARPA projects that could revolutionize the armed forces

Thanks to its multibillion dollar annual budget and access to some of the sharpest minds around, few research labs could dream of having the resources that DARPA enjoys.

Short for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA is the wing of the U.S. Department of Defense that’s responsible for developing emerging technologies for military use. With everything from brain implants to robo-suits, the agency trying is hardest to make future tech a 2018 reality — and to do it sooner than those who would seek to use that technology against the United States.

Here are seven of the most attention-grabbing DARPA research projects we know about. (And if these are the ones they’ve publicly announced, just think about the ones we don’t yet know of!)

Soft Exoskeletons
Image used with permission by copyright holder

When people talk about the future of warfare they often discuss using technologies such as drones or robots as a replacement for human troops on the ground. The distinction doesn’t have to be quite so binary, though. Cutting edge technologies can also be used to “supercharge” troops by giving humans enhanced abilities, including faster speeds and greater strength.

Working with researchers from Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, DARPA’s Soft Exosuit is a lightweight skeleton frame for soldiers which can augment its wearer’s strength and endurance; using in-built sensors and a micro-computer to intelligently match the requirements of its user.

Implantable health trackers
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Your body offers you all kinds of feedback about how you are faring when it comes to health. However, a DARPA project created in association with the U.S. Army Research Office promises to take this to the next level — courtesy of tissue-integrated biosensor technology.

The idea is to implant tiny soft hydrogel-based sensors under the skin, and use them to measure biomarkers related to oxygen, glucose, lactate, urea, and ion levels. These sensors could stay in the body for up to two years, and read out information direct to connected devices like smartphones. A consumer-facing version of the same technology could one day help individuals manage chronic diseases such as diabetes.

Self-guiding bullets
Image used with permission by copyright holder

A sniper bullet that changes trajectory after its been fired sounds totally like the stuff of science fiction. However, it describes a real life project being carried out by DARPA which could soon nullify misfiring problems related to weather conditions, wind or plain old shooter errors.

EXACTO ammunition uses an in-built guidance system to keep it on target. Sadly, the whole “secret government project” thing means that specifics about how the guidance system works are classified.

Submarine-hunting drone
DARPA

When you think of a drone, you probably picture the kind of unmanned aerial quadcopter that Amazon could one day use to deliver packages. DARPA has different ideas, though. It has created a 140-ton autonomous drone boat with the goal of tracking enemy submarines. It could also be used for detecting mines in the open ocean.

DARPA’s Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel can continuously operate for 60-90 days with no human intervention necessary. Following successful sea trials, the “Sea Hunter” prototype is now being further developed under the banner of the Office of Naval Research.

Giant airships
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Talking of giant vehicles, DARPA’s Walrus project set out to create an airship able to haul a payload of 500-1,000 tons (around 1-2 million pounds) up to 12,000 nautical miles in less than a week. Such a vehicle would be immensely useful for quickly deploying large numbers of troops, complete with all their gear and other equipment.

Sadly, the Walrus project seems like it will never get off the ground. But DARPA continues to investigate various Hybrid Ultra Large Aircraft (HULA) initiatives.

Robot insect spies
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Years of exposure to spy movies has likely led our enemies to be suspicious of suave tuxedo-wearing types eavesdropping in the background. You know what could get around that? Cyborg insect spies.

A variety of different insects have been explored as part of the HI-MEMS program, including flying moth implants and beetles. Using implants, researchers have shown that it’s possible to stimulate insect brains and control them in flight. Eventually such insects could be used in the field to gain access to areas not easily reachable by humans or robots.

Brain-computer interface
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Elon Musk may be interested in building high speed brain-computer interfaces, but even he’s not got the resources at his disposal that DARPA has. Working with various organizations as part of its Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program, DARPA wants to develop “an implantable system able to provide precision communication between the brain and the digital world.”

The idea behind the project is to find ways of converting the chemical and electrical signals of the brain into machine readable data, and vice versa. The end result could mean a neural link that lets the human brain tap into video feeds or, on the other end, allows computers to see exactly what we are seeing at any moment.

Luke Dormehl
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
This AI cloned my voice using just three minutes of audio
acapela group voice cloning ad

There's a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that you might recall. In it, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tackles the movie's villain, holds him at gunpoint, and forces him to read a bizarre series of sentences aloud.

"The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy," he reluctantly reads. "He put a tack on Miss Yancy's chair, and she called him a horrible boy. At the end of the month, he was flinging two kittens across the width of the room ..."

Read more
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more