Research and development (R&D or R+D) is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations, wealthy industrialists (such as Alfred Lee Loomis), or governments in developing new services or products. R&D constitutes the first stage of development of a potential new service or the production process. Although R&D activities may differ ac...

The United States Department of Defense (DoD), also referred to as the Department of War (DoW), is an executive department of the United States federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the United States Armed Forces—the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, and, for some purposes, the Coast Guard—and related functi...

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. A General of the Army, Eisenhower was the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. His successful leadership in Operation Torch (1942–1943) and Operation Overlord ...

Sputnik 1 (, Russian: Спутник-1, Satellite 1), often referred to as simply Sputnik, was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for three weeks before its three silver-zinc batte...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the agency was created on February 7, 1958, by President Dwight D...

The Aurora X-65 CRANE is an experimental aircraft that is currently under development. In charge are the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences.

SPRINT’s experimental aircraft is now being built by Bell Textron, Inc. following a successful Critical Design Review.

The X‑68A completed a series of technical milestones, moving its air-launched uninhabited vehicle closer to flight test.

In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping data into short messages in fixed format, i.e., packets, that are transmitted over a telecommunications network. Packets consist of a header and a payload. The header directs the packet to its destination, where the payload is extracted and used by an operating system, application s...

The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and the Internet Protocol (IP)...

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first computer networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet. The ARPANET was established by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (no...

X-41 is the designation, initiated in 2003, for a still-classified United States military spaceplane. The X-41 is now part of the FALCON (Force Application and Launch from Continental United States) program sponsored by DARPA and NASA.

An expendable launch system (or expendable launch vehicle/ELV) is a launch vehicle that can be launched only once, after which its components are destroyed during reentry or impact with Earth, or discarded in space. ELVs typically consist of several rocket stages that are discarded sequentially as their fuel is exhausted and the vehicle gains al...

A reusable launch vehicle has parts that can be recovered and reflown, while carrying payloads from the surface to outer space. Rocket stages are the most common launch vehicle parts aimed for reuse. Smaller parts such as fairings, boosters or rocket engines can also be reused, though reusable spacecraft may be launched on top of an expendable l...

The DARPA FALCON Project (Force Application and Launch from Continental United States) was a two-part joint project between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the United States Air Force (USAF) and is part of Prompt Global Strike. The first part of the project aimed to develop a Small Launch System (SLS) capable of acceler...

What is DARPA and what are some of the technologies it invented? Read on to find out more...

Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate. It was involved in aircraft, the space industry, defense and commercial electronics, components in the automotive industry, printing presses, avionics and industrial products. At its peak, Rockwell International was No. 27 on the Fortune 500 list, with assets of over $8 bill...

Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) was a West German aerospace manufacturer. It was formed during the late 1960s as the result of efforts to consolidate the West German aerospace industry; aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt AG merged with the civil engineering and aviation firm Bölkow in 1968, while rival aircraft manufacturer Hamburger Flugzeu...

The Rockwell-Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm X-31 is an experimental jet aircraft designed to test fighter thrust vectoring technology. It was designed and built by Rockwell and Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB), as part of a joint United States and German Enhanced Fighter Maneuverability program to provide additional control authority in pitch and ...

Two X-31 Enhanced Fighter Maneuverability demonstrators were test-flown during the early 1990s at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA, to obtain

The X-31 experimental aircraft was designed and built by Rockwell and Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB), as part of a joint U.S. and German Enhanced Fighter Maneuverability program to improve pilots’ abilities to control the aircraft’s pitch and yaw with more finesse than was possible in most conventional fighters. One outcome was the abilit...

EXACTO, an acronym of "Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance", is a sniper rifle firing smart bullets being developed for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) by Lockheed Martin and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in November 2008. The new .50 BMG gun and improved scope could employ "fire-and-forget" technologies including "fin-stabilized...

The objective of the EXACTO program was to revolutionize rifle accuracy and range by developing the first ever guided small-caliber bullet.

DARPA’s N3 program developed injectable nanoparticles that enable mind-machine connections without surgery, allowing control of drones via thoughts. While promising for military and medical a…

Therapeutic modulation of the activity of the body’s peripheral nervous system (PNS) holds a world of potential for mitigating and treating disease and other health conditions—if researchers can figure out a feasible long-term mechanism for communicating with the nerves and pathways that make up the body’s information superhighway between ...