DARPA Demonstrates IT Projects at the Pentagon

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) displayed its ongoing IT projects in front of DoD officials, defense contractors and key public-sector figures at the Pentagon Center Courtyard on wednesday.

According to a news release, the all-day DARPA Demo Day 2014 event — hosted by DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I20) — included more than 100 demonstrations which saw DARPA program managers and project principals showcases their latest innovations in cybersecurity, networked warfighter systems, language translation and decision support.

DARPA Demo Day 2014 showed that the future is in networks which are “increasingly resilient to natural and human-launched threats and in which lightning-fast detection of emergent, information-related irregularities—including potential threats—would inform equally fast correctives and countermeasures,” the news release states.

The event included 29 programs in four categories: Cyber (IT systems safety and security), Big Data (tools to help facilitate the use of information), Language (new translation technologies to help warfighters in foreign environments), and Warfighter Apps (projects of interest to the DoD, including the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program)

“The Information Revolution has been a huge boon to society, but our growing dependence on information networks also means that information is today’s tactical and strategic high ground, increasingly targeted by adversaries from everyday criminals to networked terrorists who would do our nation mortal harm,” said I2O Director Dan Kaufman. “I2O’s mission is to ensure the safety and reliability of essential information technologies, against the challenges we face today and also against those we can imagine well into the future. We help make the tools of the Information Revolution more powerful and useful, not just for those who ensure our security but also for the people and nation they protect.”