Steven Walker, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, discussed some of DARPA programs at the Defense Programs Conference, the Department of Defense website reported Tuesday. Walker said some of the capabilities that DARPA is developing to defend the country from existential threats and near-peer adversaries include cyber deterrence, tactical-boost guide program and hypersonic weapons.
“It’s been widely reported in the press that our adversaries and peer competitors — China and Russia and others — are developing capabilities, so what we’re doing at DARPA is hypersonics weapon programs with the Air Force Research Laboratory to develop a glider that can be air-launched from several different Air Force platforms,†he said at the event hosted by McAleese and Associates and Credit Suisse.
“It has long-range capability. We hope to fly the first one by the end of this calendar year,” he added. Walker also mentioned DARPA’s work on artificial intelligence. “We’re also planning to bring AI into the game and have this constellation be able to focus based on passing data from one satellite to the next on various missions and we’ll see if it works,†he said.
The Wash100 award, now in its sixth year, recognizes the most influential executives in the GovCon industry as selected by the Executive Mosaic team in tandem with online nominations from the GovCon community. Representing the best of the private and public sector, the winners demonstrate superior leadership, innovation, reliability, achievement and vision.
Visit the Wash100 site to learn about the other 99 winners of the 2019 Wash100 Award. On the site, you can submit your 10 votes for the GovCon executives of consequence that you believe will have the most significant impact in 2019.
