Research agency's past, future lauded

ANAHEIM, Calif., Aug. 1 (UPI) -- One of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's most famous alumni, along with a longtime agency supporter, said Thursday that DARPA's activities remain vital to national security.

Vinton Cerf co-created the earliest version of the Internet in the early 1970s as part of an agency project and later spent several years as a DARPA employee. He assured attendees of DARPATECH 2002 they do not always have to look into the future to find applications for their leading-edge research.

"We may have rejected ideas in the past because they were impossible to implement, because we didn't have the resources, the computing power, the memory and everything else," Cerf said. "It's really healthy to go back and re-examine the principles around which you design technology, because things may have changed. I know DARPA will (remember that and) be here stimulating our minds for years to come."

Cerf is heeding his own words in examining the Internet's future, as ever-faster data transfer speeds in the Net's core make it more difficult to properly route information to its desired goal. With cybersecurity becoming a primary concern among both civilian and military users, he said, he often laments missing the chance to add cryptography and other security tools early in the Net's development.

"It would be worth our time and energy to imagine an Internet in which authentication of the components, knowing who's generating the traffic, would be useful," Cerf said. "The idea of building authentication into the edges of the Net might be worth our consideration, and I'm committing myself to go back and look at what that design might be."

Cerf also working on the idea of an interplanetary Internet, using previously launched spacecraft as a data backbone. The concept requires a brand-new way of handling data transfer, he said, because the time lag caused by the distances involved renders the Net's "handshake" protocols unworkable.

This sort of approach also might apply to DARPA's military communications work, Cerf said, because tactical wireless networks could encounter similar delays as transmitters continually go off the air to avoid detection.

The agency has been the crown jewel in the U.S. military's move to an information-centric strategy, said William Perry, who served as secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton. Perry also worked with DARPA as a senior Defense Department acquisitions official in the late 1970s, when the nation was starting to turn to advanced technology.

"The allied victory in World War II was primarily due to America's industrial might ... by the 1970s, it was clear that producing huge quantities of weapons was not a winning strategy in the Cold War," Perry told the conference. "We made the cornerstone of our defense the development of a new class of intelligent systems."

DARPA was the tool Perry used to place the nation's bets on then up-and-coming technologies such as precision-guided weapons and radar-defeating materials. The agency's ability to pull together such systems was so unique, Perry said, that even our allies are struggling to duplicate the systems a decade after their overwhelming success in the Persian Gulf War.

The job is far from over, however, Perry reminded the crowd, even as potential adversaries realize they cannot compete on an equal basis. That line of thought is what drives nations and terrorist groups to seek weapons of mass destruction, he said.

The DARPA legacy of giving the military understanding and control of battlefield information must continue, Perry said. The U.S. strategy's heavy reliance on information technology means researchers must ensure the systems are protected from cyberattack and other unconventional threats. The battlefield awareness currently available to senior commanders must be extended to the individual warfighter, he said, especially as battles become smaller, as in the case of special operations action in Afghanistan.