Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from house
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And this is the second part in
Speaker 1: my series about DARPA, the R and D arm of
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense. If you have not listened to
Speaker 1: the previous episode, I would recommend you go back and
Speaker 1: listen to that one first to hear about the founding
Speaker 1: of the agency and its first few projects, including the
Speaker 1: world's first spy satellite, before you come on over to
Speaker 1: this one now. I mentioned in the last episode that
Speaker 1: there were tons of projects and historical events all happening
Speaker 1: around the formation of ARPA, which was of course the
Speaker 1: original name for DARPA, and that meant I had to
Speaker 1: pick and choose which ones to talk about and follow
Speaker 1: those lines of logic. One of the ones I skipped
Speaker 1: over is one I want to look at before I
Speaker 1: move on in the timeline of the agency, and the
Speaker 1: project would involve exploding nuclear warheads high above the earth
Speaker 1: in an effort to create what would amount to a
Speaker 1: force field of sorts in order to protect the United
Speaker 1: States from an incoming nuclear strike. This project was based
Speaker 1: off the work of a physicist named Nick Christophilis, and
Speaker 1: he had come up with a hypothesis. He believed that
Speaker 1: the high energy electrons produced in a nuclear explosion could,
Speaker 1: if it happened in Earth's magnetosphere, produce a lasting effect
Speaker 1: akin to what we now think of as an electromagnetic
Speaker 1: pulse or e m P. These powerful blasts of electromagnetic
Speaker 1: energy can overwhelm electronic systems and cause them to fail
Speaker 1: or even to burn out entirely. And it's the sort
Speaker 1: of thing that might happen in the event of solar
Speaker 1: storms or, as it turns out, the explosion of a
Speaker 1: nuclear device. Christophilos believed that the magnetosphere would sustain the
Speaker 1: high energy electrons, and anything relying upon electronics that would
Speaker 1: try to pass through that barrier would end up failing,
Speaker 1: including the arming and firing mechanisms on Soviet I CBM,
Speaker 1: so they would just become ballistics. They wouldn't they wouldn't explode,
Speaker 1: they would be inert because the the firing mechanism would
Speaker 1: never deploy. A full scale deployment of this approach would
Speaker 1: require firing hundreds or even thousands of nuclear warheads into
Speaker 1: high altitudes, and they theorized that the the high energy
Speaker 1: electrons could last for months in the magnetosphere. Christophilis was
Speaker 1: an interesting character. He had been an elevator installer back
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen thirties. He worked in an elevator company.
Speaker 1: It had its ups and downs, but in his spare
Speaker 1: time he was coming up with scientific hypotheses and inventing
Speaker 1: theoretical devices, you know, little inventions like particle accelerators. So
Speaker 1: while his idea sounded wild, Arbo was willing to give
Speaker 1: it a shot because he had shown that he had
Speaker 1: a keen understanding of nuclear physics from a self taught perspective,
Speaker 1: which seemed pretty remarkable. The test would be called Operation Argus.
Speaker 1: The US chose a spot in the South Atlantic Ocean,
Speaker 1: essentially between the tip of Africa and the tip of
Speaker 1: South America. It was about as remote from human civilization
Speaker 1: as you could get without being in the Antarctic. And
Speaker 1: this was an enormous endeavor. It wasn't like one launch pad.
Speaker 1: We're talking four thousand five military personnel involved. On top
Speaker 1: of that, you had scientists, you had engineers, were all
Speaker 1: part of the test. The first test happened on August
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, on that
Speaker 1: same day, Ernest Lawrence, one of the strongest advocates for
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons development and testing, passed away. Ernest Lawrence and
Speaker 1: Edward Teller had been the gung ho proponents of building
Speaker 1: out a nuclear arsenal, including the hydrogen bomb and and
Speaker 1: bigger weapons beyond that. He had at the time been
Speaker 1: attending a conference dedicated to arriving at a global ban
Speaker 1: on nuclear weapons testing. This was essentially by order of
Speaker 1: the US government. President Eisenhower and Herb York, the scientific
Speaker 1: director over at ARPA, had given him this assignment. It
Speaker 1: was kind of ironic that they sent Lawrence there to
Speaker 1: talk about a nuclear test band, considering his personal views
Speaker 1: on the subject, and that may have contributed to stress,
Speaker 1: which in turn may have contributed to his health deteriorating
Speaker 1: and then ultimately his passing. The Argus tests, which consisted
Speaker 1: of three separate nuclear weapons fired in into the atmosphere
Speaker 1: on three different occasions from late August into early September,
Speaker 1: were considered a failure. The explosions did not produce the
Speaker 1: effects Christophilos had did. The explosions did create high energy electrons,
Speaker 1: and they did exist a bit longer in the magnetosphere
Speaker 1: than they might have otherwise, but not at the intensity
Speaker 1: and duration that Christophilos had anticipated, not enough to be
Speaker 1: a force field protector against incoming I C b ms,
Speaker 1: So this defense was not going to pan out. There
Speaker 1: was some talk that perhaps the engineers and scientists could
Speaker 1: figure out a way to make it work if they
Speaker 1: had more time to test, but with the approaching ban
Speaker 1: on nuclear testing coming, that would make the matter moot.
Speaker 1: The ban on nuclear testing would begin on October thirty one,
Speaker 1: ninety eight. Edward Teller, the proponent of nuclear tests and
Speaker 1: friend to Ernest Lawrence, suggested that the United States keep
Speaker 1: testing anyway, but if they were to keep those tests
Speaker 1: to less than a kill a ton of force, they
Speaker 1: could probably do it and remain undetectable by all the
Speaker 1: different powers in the world that were interested in monitoring
Speaker 1: such stuff. So he essentially said, if you want to
Speaker 1: do testing on the QT, just keep those explosions below
Speaker 1: one kill a ton of force. You can keep on
Speaker 1: changing up your designs and approaches to nuclear weaponry as
Speaker 1: long as we don't make the boom too big, and
Speaker 1: then no one will ever be the wiser, and essentially
Speaker 1: Teller said, whether we choose to do this or not,
Speaker 1: you can bet the Soviets are going to be doing it.
Speaker 1: Tell her was very much of that kind of opinion
Speaker 1: of the Soviet Union for all of his life. Now,
Speaker 1: when I left off in the last episode, I was
Speaker 1: talking about the Corona Project, the aforementioned spy satellites that
Speaker 1: had a public cover name called Discoverer. The nature of
Speaker 1: the Corona project would remain classified until ninet so for
Speaker 1: decades the American public was kept ignorant of what Discoverer
Speaker 1: satellites were actually doing up in space, which was taking
Speaker 1: photos mostly of the Soviet Union. By the time the
Speaker 1: Corona Project was a success, DARPA had a new director.
Speaker 1: The original director, Roy W. Johnson, resigned in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: nine after much of our was work in the missile
Speaker 1: program got undermined and handed back over to the various
Speaker 1: Armed services branches. The morale at ARPA was shaken as
Speaker 1: a result. People working in ARPA had the goal of
Speaker 1: advancing technology and military applications, and they were starting to
Speaker 1: feel like their work was being tossed aside or dismissed. Now,
Speaker 1: originally Johnson's replacement was going to be a guy named
Speaker 1: Charles Critchfield. Critchfield was a nuclear physicist who had worked
Speaker 1: on the Manhattan Project. In nine he was working for
Speaker 1: Convey in their General Dynamics department and he received the
Speaker 1: request to come be the director of ARPA. But he
Speaker 1: had a really good paying gig over at Convey. So
Speaker 1: originally he was saying, I'll do it as long as
Speaker 1: I can keep my position at Convey, and then I'll
Speaker 1: just recuse myself from any project that Convey might be
Speaker 1: part of to avoid the appearance of favoritism. But the
Speaker 1: press pushed against that notion, asking how would he be
Speaker 1: able to stay objective considering what looked like a really
Speaker 1: serious conflict of intra So he withdrew himself from consideration.
Speaker 1: Herbert York was given the task to find someone else,
Speaker 1: and so he looked at the office of the Secretary
Speaker 1: of Defense, and there he found General Austin Betts, who
Speaker 1: was the deputy to the Director of Guided Missiles. York
Speaker 1: also warned Bets that ARPA was the target of opposition
Speaker 1: from pretty much every branch of the military. Bets understood,
Speaker 1: and he went about doing his best to mollify the
Speaker 1: concerns and the objections of military brass while letting the
Speaker 1: administrators at ARPA continue their work as best he could.
Speaker 1: Bets gets a lot of credit for stabilizing ARPA in
Speaker 1: the wake of Johnson's departure. He also worked with the
Speaker 1: branches of the Armed forces to recognize ARPA's place in
Speaker 1: the overall strategy for the United States. According to Bets,
Speaker 1: military officials would look at ARPA with some level of
Speaker 1: resentment because they believe that the money that was going
Speaker 1: to ARPA could have been better spent in those respective
Speaker 1: military branches. Essentially, they're taking our money. Bets did his
Speaker 1: best to convince them that ARPA's R and D focus
Speaker 1: would be a benefit to the branches in the long run,
Speaker 1: and it was not intended to be a competing agency.
Speaker 1: I'll have more to say about DARPA's early days in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. In nineteen sixty, ARPA announced the
Speaker 1: launch of an interdisciplinary Laboratory or IDEL program. The purpose
Speaker 1: of this program was to advance materials science, which is
Speaker 1: the study of the properties of matter and potential applications,
Speaker 1: which again largely had to do with defense. The agency
Speaker 1: awarded three contracts that year, each contract lasting four years,
Speaker 1: and they all had renewable clauses attached to them. The
Speaker 1: three universities that won those first contracts were the University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, and Northwestern University. The IDEL program
Speaker 1: would continue for twelve years. It would include more universities
Speaker 1: over time, and then ARPA would transfer it to the
Speaker 1: National Science Foundation, which subsequently changed the program's name to
Speaker 1: the Materials Research Laboratories Program. That program would fund exploratory
Speaker 1: research in all sorts of materials, some of which would
Speaker 1: end up playing an important role in making better tools
Speaker 1: and equipment for the military. Also in nineteen sixty, ARPA
Speaker 1: launched a navigation satellite, the first and what would eventually
Speaker 1: become a global navigation system. It was called Transit. The
Speaker 1: project grew out of R and D work from the
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins Universities Applied Physics Laboratory. The satellite had an
Speaker 1: accuracy down to tens of meters, which helped boost map
Speaker 1: accuracy considerably. Are BA administered the project until the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, when it would transfer that system to the
Speaker 1: United States Navy Transit would ultimately consist of thirty six
Speaker 1: satellites in orbit and would serve as the primary US
Speaker 1: satellite based navigation system until nine, when it would be
Speaker 1: replaced by the Global Positioning System or GPS. Over the
Speaker 1: first two years of ARPA's existence, the budget for its
Speaker 1: Defender program, also known as the Ballistics Missile Defense or
Speaker 1: BMD project, was about nine hundred million dollars from R
Speaker 1: and D to operations, so just under a billion dollars,
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of money now and back in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. Nineteen sixty would be a really big year
Speaker 1: of changes for DARPA, or again ARPA at the time.
Speaker 1: Herbert York, who was the first chief Scientist then he
Speaker 1: became Director of Defense Research and Engineering, would step down.
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy became President of the United States, and
Speaker 1: as a result, as is frequently the case with administration changes,
Speaker 1: you started to see a house cleaning process where people
Speaker 1: who had been uh inhabiting certain positions and various agencies
Speaker 1: are removed and new people are put in place. But
Speaker 1: for a short time, York was essentially the acting Secretary
Speaker 1: of Defense until Kennedy's pick, a guy named McNamara would
Speaker 1: make his way through confirmation hearings, so for a short while,
Speaker 1: Herbert York was effectively in charge of the codes for
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons in the United States, like all of them.
Speaker 1: This was before the country had established the protocols around
Speaker 1: the so called nuclear football, so he was the head
Speaker 1: man in charge of the nuclear weapons arsenal at that
Speaker 1: point for a few months or a few days really.
Speaker 1: Kennedy was concerned about Communist insurgents in Southeast Asia, particularly
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, so in response, he began to task officials
Speaker 1: with coming up with counter insurgency strategies. ARPA would play
Speaker 1: a big role in that, particularly starting in nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: I'll get back to that in a second, but first,
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one, after spending just a little more
Speaker 1: than a year as the director of ARPA, General Betts resigned.
Speaker 1: His placement was a guy named Dr Jack p. Runa,
Speaker 1: an electrical engineer who was a professor in my t now.
Speaker 1: Runa was the first scientist to head up our PA
Speaker 1: from a director level. He would step down in nineteene,
Speaker 1: but in a short time as director he would oversee
Speaker 1: many important projects and developments, including the founding of the
Speaker 1: Information Processing Techniques Office or I p t O. More
Speaker 1: on that in our next episode. As part of Project Defender,
Speaker 1: ARPA would reach out to another young organization called Jason.
Speaker 1: Jason was a for profit scientific research group largely dedicated
Speaker 1: to tackling problems related to defense and military applications. Is
Speaker 1: named after the Greek hero Jason, and it was a secretive,
Speaker 1: exclusive group of some of the most talented scientists in
Speaker 1: the United States. Super duper hush hush, though, and these
Speaker 1: scientists would get top level security clearance to various programs.
Speaker 1: Through Out its run, ARPA would ask Jason to pitch
Speaker 1: ideas that would improve the Defender missile defense program. One
Speaker 1: such proposal they came up with was to equip every
Speaker 1: US warhead with decoys to confound the Soviet Union's anti
Speaker 1: ballistic missile defense system. So in this case, there wasn't
Speaker 1: so much as defending against incoming missiles as to make
Speaker 1: our outgoing missiles more effective. Essentially, every warhead would deploy
Speaker 1: a decoy or more than one up to five to
Speaker 1: improve its chances of making it through the defenses of
Speaker 1: the USSR to detonate at its intended target. The strategy
Speaker 1: became known as Penetration AIDS or pen AIDS for short.
Speaker 1: This would later grow into another project called pen X,
Speaker 1: in which scientists work on creating multiple independently targeted reentry
Speaker 1: vehicles also known as merv's m I r vs. The
Speaker 1: Jason Group was being funded by ARPA, but it was
Speaker 1: so secretive and its work was so important to US
Speaker 1: defense that the scientists were able to put tough restrictions
Speaker 1: on ARPA's involvement with their work, like crazy restrictions. They
Speaker 1: demanded that they would be allowed to to work on
Speaker 1: their own solving whatever problems were assigned to them without
Speaker 1: outside interference. And the only person from ARPA who was
Speaker 1: allowed to attend their summer sessions. And this was a
Speaker 1: concession they made uh most of the members of JASON,
Speaker 1: by the way, we're teaching throughout most of the year,
Speaker 1: the summer was when they would have time off, and
Speaker 1: so they would dedicate that to working on these problems.
Speaker 1: The only person from ARPA who could go to this
Speaker 1: summer session was the director himself, Jack Runo. No one
Speaker 1: else from MARPA would be allowed to hang out with
Speaker 1: the scientists, and eventually RUNA agreed to this because they
Speaker 1: needed these guys. The Jason scientists also worked on on
Speaker 1: a super top secret project on directed energy beam weapons.
Speaker 1: So one of the important members of the Jason group
Speaker 1: was a guy named Charles Towns. Charles Towns built the
Speaker 1: first maser that's the microwave based precursor of the laser,
Speaker 1: so the team wanted to explore the possibility of using
Speaker 1: directed energy beams to send blasts at, say, an incoming missile,
Speaker 1: in order to disarm it. There have been numerous directed
Speaker 1: energy beam product projects at DARPA. Most of those remain classified,
Speaker 1: so we can only guess as to how far along
Speaker 1: they have come, although a lot of people will say
Speaker 1: that the technology being worked on at various projects that
Speaker 1: are funded by DARPA tends to be up to ten
Speaker 1: years ahead of the stuff you would see out in
Speaker 1: the quote unquote real world, so that's something to think about. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in Hawaii, ARPA began a project called the ARPA mid
Speaker 1: Course Optical Station or AMOS A m o S in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one. This was an observatory that was meant
Speaker 1: to detect, image, and take measurements of space objects like satellites, payloads,
Speaker 1: and other stuff like miss re entering the Airth's atmosphere.
Speaker 1: The facility is on top of a mountain in Maui, Hawaii.
Speaker 1: It would take years to build this facility and the
Speaker 1: instruments needed to carry out the task, but it all
Speaker 1: started in nineteen sixty one. In nineteen sixty nine it
Speaker 1: was an established facility. It entered into its second phase
Speaker 1: of operation, in which would measure re entry bodies as
Speaker 1: part of the Advanced Ballistic re Entry System project. And
Speaker 1: in nineteen four DARPA. At that point the agency's name
Speaker 1: had changed kind of and it had changed back. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two they would change back to ARPA and
Speaker 1: then back to DARPA again. We'll get there anyway. In
Speaker 1: ninety four, DARPA transferred the facility over to the US
Speaker 1: Air Force to become part of the Air Force Space
Speaker 1: Tracking System. In ninety three, AMOS got a name change,
Speaker 1: at least the acronym has now changed. Now it stands
Speaker 1: for Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site. So remember
Speaker 1: when I talked about the counterinsurgency efforts that Kennedy was
Speaker 1: interested in. Well, in nineteen sixty one that took shape
Speaker 1: as a huge initiative, probably the third biggest project DARPA
Speaker 1: was tackling behind Defender and Vila Villa being the project
Speaker 1: to to be able to detect nuclear weapons detonations. This
Speaker 1: project was called Agile and it was a joint effort
Speaker 1: between ARPA. There was a group of advisors called the
Speaker 1: Military Assistance Advisory Group or m a a G, and
Speaker 1: South Vietnam officials like the President of South Vietnam. The
Speaker 1: project would have to deal with an entirely different approach
Speaker 1: than the counterballistics work that ARPA had been involved with.
Speaker 1: This was a major switching of gears from missile warfare
Speaker 1: to how to get a technological advantage over enemy forces
Speaker 1: that were at home fighting in say, jungle environments. One
Speaker 1: of the champions project Agile was a guy named William Godal,
Speaker 1: and intelligence operative who worked with ARPA and who acted
Speaker 1: as sort of a liaison between various intelligence agencies and ARPA.
Speaker 1: While many of the scientists at ARPA came from a
Speaker 1: perspective of advancing the US capabilities in nuclear warfare, Godal
Speaker 1: was looking at things from a different point of view.
Speaker 1: He was interested in psychological warfare and the alleged brainwashing
Speaker 1: techniques used by communists in the fifties and early sixties,
Speaker 1: and he advocated for the creation of an ARPA branch
Speaker 1: in Southeast Asia. Kennedy agreed, and the agency established the
Speaker 1: ARPA Combat Development and Test Center. More on what they
Speaker 1: did in just a moment, but first another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Godal wanted to develop techniques to
Speaker 1: teach the South Vietnamese military how to combat insurgents, preferably
Speaker 1: in a way that would not require the United States
Speaker 1: to get directly involved, and in that way, the United
Speaker 1: States could push back against the spread of Communism without
Speaker 1: being on the ground in a war. So the thought
Speaker 1: was that Project Agile would develop not just technology, but
Speaker 1: best practices for the South Vietnamese military to use to
Speaker 1: fight off the Viet Cong and the spread of communism.
Speaker 1: It was the most active ARPA would get in actual
Speaker 1: military operations. One of the many developments under Project Agile,
Speaker 1: which covered tons of different subprojects UH, and one of
Speaker 1: the most tragic. In fact, I would argue is probably
Speaker 1: the most tragic of the projects that Agile was focused on,
Speaker 1: was the development of the so called rainbow agents. These
Speaker 1: were chemical agents and they were meant to kill off vegetation. UH.
Speaker 1: They were herbicides. They were designed to remove jungle cover
Speaker 1: and also to take away any advantage insurgents might have
Speaker 1: while engaging in guerrilla warfare and to affect food supply.
Speaker 1: Although Godal was largely looking at this as a way
Speaker 1: of taking away the jungle cover to remove that advantage
Speaker 1: that the viet Cong held. The most famous of these
Speaker 1: rainbow agents was, of course, agent Orange. Now agent orange
Speaker 1: is a mixture of two major herbicides, and it also
Speaker 1: happens to be incredibly toxic to human beings. The President
Speaker 1: of Vietnam, President d M, wanted to use herbicide in
Speaker 1: large regions which would affect both insurgents and innocent Vietnamese citizens.
Speaker 1: They are beside would affect jungles and food crops, including
Speaker 1: food crops just grown by innocent people, not people who
Speaker 1: were feeding the viet Cong. D M's goal was to
Speaker 1: make the viet Cong, those those communists insurgents, dependent upon
Speaker 1: the South Vietnamese government for food and that would force
Speaker 1: them to obey him. So he took this tool that
Speaker 1: ARPA had created, this herbicide, and he put to use
Speaker 1: in a wide area, affecting thousands of people. Agent orange
Speaker 1: can damage genes and it can lead to birth defects
Speaker 1: and offspring. It can lead to higher instances of cancer
Speaker 1: to people have been exposed to it. It's one of
Speaker 1: the most terrible weapons created by the United States and
Speaker 1: actually put to use in warfare. I also think it's
Speaker 1: an example of some of the mental gymnastics that William
Speaker 1: Goldal was able to go through to justify the existence
Speaker 1: of this program. To begin with, the Geneva Convention expressly forbids,
Speaker 1: chemical and biological weapons, and if you use them, you're
Speaker 1: going to be the target of the international communities scorn
Speaker 1: and worse, and the United States did not want to
Speaker 1: to court that scorn. But destroying an enemy's food supply
Speaker 1: is not against the Geneva Convention. You can do that
Speaker 1: and it's quote unquote fair. The rules of what is
Speaker 1: and isn't fair and warfare still kind of perplex me.
Speaker 1: It's a weird thing to think about that something that
Speaker 1: is terrible to people in one way is not against
Speaker 1: the rules, and something that's terrible to people in a
Speaker 1: different way is against the rules. Blows my mind anyway.
Speaker 1: Framing this project as targeting not the people but their
Speaker 1: food and the jungle itself wasn't against the Geneva Convention,
Speaker 1: at least not on the surface. However, since the chemicals
Speaker 1: were distributed by plane or helicopter, which meant they were
Speaker 1: sprayed over large, often populated areas, I think it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to say we were just aiming for the
Speaker 1: jungle and the food. We didn't mean to get the
Speaker 1: people to Despite all that, President Kennedy approved the use
Speaker 1: of the Arab side, though admittedly he did cut the
Speaker 1: scope of the proposed use by a significant amount. Even so,
Speaker 1: by the end of the Vietnam War, about nineteen million
Speaker 1: gallons of the stuff had been unleashed in Vietnam. The
Speaker 1: estimates on the number of Vietnamese directly exposed to the
Speaker 1: chemicals range from two point one million people on the
Speaker 1: conservative side up to four point eight million people. It's
Speaker 1: truly horrifying stuff. Now. The documentation for Project Agile outlines
Speaker 1: eight sub project areas. There's tactical unit weapons systems, area
Speaker 1: fire weapons systems, remote area mobility and logistics systems, communication systems,
Speaker 1: combat surveillance and target acquisition systems, individual and special projects,
Speaker 1: technical planning and programming, and finally, research and exploratory development.
Speaker 1: The work in Project Agile would lead to stuff like
Speaker 1: flame throwers, and then the adoption of the M sixteen
Speaker 1: as the infantry weapon of choice for US soldiers. The
Speaker 1: M sixteen was based off the cult A R fifteen,
Speaker 1: a style of rifle that today has a pretty horrific
Speaker 1: reputation in various shooting incidents. The A R fifteen fires
Speaker 1: five five six ammunition five point five six millimeter ammunition.
Speaker 1: During Project Agile, the US military mostly was using the
Speaker 1: I fourteen rifle for its soldiers, uh the M fourteen
Speaker 1: fires a heavy seven point six two millimeter ammunition seven
Speaker 1: six to The prevailing wisdom was that the five six
Speaker 1: mma would not pack the punch needed in US military operations.
Speaker 1: Part of the Project Agile had ARPA scientists heading up
Speaker 1: projects to improve and test A R fifteen's to change
Speaker 1: them into a new type of light assault rifle so
Speaker 1: that the lighter weapon could replace this heavier M fourteen
Speaker 1: and it would be more useful to Vietnamese soldiers, who
Speaker 1: the group viewed as being smaller than American soldiers and
Speaker 1: therefore they would need lighter weapons. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: comment on that other than to say that that was
Speaker 1: there conclusion anyway that led to the M sixteen, which
Speaker 1: until fairly recently was the primary weapon of the U
Speaker 1: S military. It's since been largely replaced by the M
Speaker 1: four carbine, which is another five five six m O gun. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to spare you guys the language that's in
Speaker 1: the reports on the performance of the A R fifteen's
Speaker 1: that ARPA had issued to US Special Forces for lie
Speaker 1: field tests, meaning that soldiers were tearing this into actual
Speaker 1: combat scenarios. Suffice it to say that the weapons were
Speaker 1: found to be very effective, and the language makes that clear,
Speaker 1: and how deadly the weapons were in actual combat situations.
Speaker 1: It's really disturbing stuff. Actually, how casually these reports refer
Speaker 1: to the lethality of the weapons. It's very matter of fact,
Speaker 1: which I get, I suppose from a you know, observing
Speaker 1: and evaluing the performance of a tool. But when you
Speaker 1: realize that the execution of that tool is the literal
Speaker 1: end of someone's life, it's pretty sobering stuff. Other parts
Speaker 1: of Project Agile seemed fairly bizarre. For example, there was
Speaker 1: a canine program that was part of Project Agile. In
Speaker 1: this program, are But proposed developing a chemical scent that
Speaker 1: dogs could detect but humans could not. And the idea
Speaker 1: was that Viennamese soldiers could quietly and secretly mark large
Speaker 1: groups of people with a chemical or maybe even have
Speaker 1: an aircraft pass overhead and spray it out. The chemical
Speaker 1: would be harmless, but it would be detectable by these canines,
Speaker 1: and then Vietnamese soldiers could use dogs to track people
Speaker 1: who turned up in suspicious places. As a result, AREPA
Speaker 1: tested a chemical they called Squalingens, was made from shark
Speaker 1: and fish liver oil. Uh The tests proved promising when
Speaker 1: they were conducted over at Fort Benning, Georgia, not too
Speaker 1: far from where I am. But then they took it
Speaker 1: over to Vietnam and discovered that the dogs would not
Speaker 1: be able to follow the scent for very long in
Speaker 1: the hotter, more humid environments. Are But also developed a
Speaker 1: quiet power glider meant to fly just over the jungle
Speaker 1: canopy silently or near silently over in Vietnam. Rather, of course,
Speaker 1: are But did not developed this itself. It funded the
Speaker 1: development of this. They first reached out to the Navy
Speaker 1: and got two unpowered SGS two thirty two gliders. Those
Speaker 1: were made by a being called the Schweitzer Aircraft Corporation.
Speaker 1: AREPA then handed those over to the company Lockeed, which
Speaker 1: used its skunk Works Special Projects division. Skunk Works is
Speaker 1: where all the super top secret work at Lockheed happens,
Speaker 1: and Lockheed would install Volkswagen air cooled engines in the
Speaker 1: gliders that would connect to the propellers. The aircraft ran
Speaker 1: pretty quietly, though not as quietly as the Army would like.
Speaker 1: They eventually would send the gliders back to Lockheed to
Speaker 1: make some changes. Now. At one point there was talk
Speaker 1: of experimenting with radar absorbing paint to reduce the radar
Speaker 1: signature of these gliders, but the team ultimately decided that
Speaker 1: that was beyond the scope of their project. The gliders
Speaker 1: were in limited use during Vietnam, but more importantly, they
Speaker 1: led to the development of other spy plane technology, stealth technology,
Speaker 1: and unmanned drones. Project Agile also included calls for new
Speaker 1: types of shotguns, new rifle grenades, uh sound cannons, cannons
Speaker 1: that would actually use sound waves as a shock deliverer,
Speaker 1: and bombs that could detonate between the top of a
Speaker 1: jungle canopy and the ground below. And besides weapons, the
Speaker 1: agency was funding research and stuff like anti venom kits
Speaker 1: in the event of a snake bite. Uh. They were
Speaker 1: creating leach repellent, you know, glamorous stuff. They're also funding
Speaker 1: projects that would retrofit existing vehicles so that they could
Speaker 1: move more effectively through the jungle environments. And they began
Speaker 1: to work to develop more advanced communication systems to help
Speaker 1: with logistics. And it was a huge undertaking and this
Speaker 1: would fuel research for several years and result in many
Speaker 1: more changes in US military operations, not all of them
Speaker 1: good ones. Project Agile would continue until nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: when ARPO would officially conclude it. Actually at that point
Speaker 1: they were called DARPA. Between its launch and its end,
Speaker 1: ARPO would officially kick off the Information Processing Techniques Office
Speaker 1: and put J. C. R. Licklider in charge of it.
Speaker 1: Liquilide Or would begin several projects that would have an
Speaker 1: enormous impact, not just on the United States but the
Speaker 1: entire world. That would include the first steps towards the
Speaker 1: establishment of the Internet. Now I'll talk about that more
Speaker 1: in the next episode. For now, let's conclude this second
Speaker 1: part of our story about DARPA. We will continue our
Speaker 1: look in our next episode exploring some of the more
Speaker 1: bizarre things that DARP has been involved with, as well
Speaker 1: as the the baby steps that would lead to the Internet.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind every single thing I've talked about,
Speaker 1: every project I've talked about, I could do a full
Speaker 1: episode or maybe a couple of episodes to really cover
Speaker 1: because there are tons of implications there, things that would
Speaker 1: spin off and become technological advancements in other areas. And
Speaker 1: it's all fascinating stuff sometimes terrifying as well. But if
Speaker 1: you have any requests, maybe there's something you heard in
Speaker 1: this episode, or maybe there's some other tech topic you
Speaker 1: would like me to cover, go on and visit tech
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