Stephen Welby is high technology's champion inside the Pentagon walls – in many ways he effectively is the Defense Department's chief technology officer. His deep background in technology and engineering, including a stint at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, inform the guidance he provides to Defense Secretary Ash Carter on science, technology, research and engineering.
So it's fitting, then, that Welby would be an active participant in DARPA's May 11 Demo Day held at the Pentagon, where C4ISR & Networks caught up with him. Welby shared some thoughts on the displays, best bets for future tech and which area continues to surprise him.
What's catching your eye at DARPA Demo Day this year?
Stephen Welby: We have a cross-section of about 80 projects from DARPA, and what's exciting is that they're interacting with warfighters here. I'm always amazed by what comes out of these interactions – they're kind of haphazard. But we've got a couple hundred really brilliant folks from DARPA talking about the future of aviation, the future of maritime systems, cyber, what comms are going to look like in the 21st century and some really cool space stuff.
Today there are amazing things happening in planning and control systems, and very exciting work going on in the future of satellite capabilities. On the maritime side there's a mock-up of the [Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel, or ACTUV] ship, which I was out with [Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work] in Portland a few weeks ago to christen. It's a fully unmanned, 180-foot-long ship capable of leaving port and crossing the ocean without a single person on board – and it follows the rules of the sea, avoids collisions, operates in severe weather and navigates by itself.
What I discovered when I was working at DARPA was for those few precious years, I was living in the future. The folks here are imagining how technology is going to shape not just the future of the Department of Defense but the future of the world. And their mission is to make it happen fast. So it's really exciting to see the ideas that people are trying to accelerate for the military.
The technology is designed to be fast-moving, but many of these projects don't have timelines. Also, the nature of military engagement is changing. How does DARPA's work fit in with current technology and operations?
Welby: There are things here that will be flight-tested next year, and there are things here that we're not quite sure how they will be applied. So you have that range. DARPA is unique in that they're high-risk, high-payoff; it's focused on application, but it's longer-ranging than you might typically have in the services. But every DARPA program starts with a customer in mind, so every [program manager] is working on a transition.
With the autonomous ship program I mentioned, they're working with the Navy on understanding lessons learned from that for future naval vessels. The folks working on novel radar technologies, or the atomic clock folks, are working with users to ensure that as they develop these technologies, when they become available the consumers then will be ready and capable to take it on. So I encourage people not to put DARPA programs in their critical path but to be ready for when DARPA programs break their critical path.
The future of national security is going to be increasingly competitive, and [Secretary Carter] has been banging this drum about innovation at the core of the way we will out-compete our future adversaries: We will out-innovate them. And the DARPA engine you see here, the technology piece, is trying to accelerate that innovation.
I know it's like picking a favorite child, but what's your favorite technology you've seen at DARPA Demo Day?
Welby: That's tough…maybe I'll go with most surprising. One of the surprising areas is the increasing work in biology, which is something we haven't traditionally been as engaged with. But biology now is becoming a technology like any other, and folks are thinking about how that could help the warfighter as well.
Biology isn't an area the department is traditionally strong in. It's largely been coupled with the academic and commercial communities. But things happening in advanced therapeutics…there's incredible work going on in advanced prosthetics, for example. Researchers are tapping the language of the brain to allow folks who've lost a limb to be able to operate these amazingly dexterous prosthetic devices. And now to be able to get feedback, to be able to touch something and actually feel it – those were the ideas of science fiction just a few years ago. The things we're doing to keep our soldiers healthy are really important.
And then of course there's great things happening in micro-electronics and software. The importance of [artificial intelligence] and autonomy in almost everything we do, and how that's playing out in in novel areas like electronic warfare and future communications, I think it's surprising, disruptive and important.
