WEBVTT - DARPA's First Projects 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.200 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from house 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.840 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:16.320 I'm Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and I love 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:20.160 all things tech. And this is the second part in 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:23.639 my series about DARPA, the R and D arm of 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:26.760 the Department of Defense. If you have not listened to 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:29.680 the previous episode, I would recommend you go back and 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:32.360 listen to that one first to hear about the founding 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:35.879 of the agency and its first few projects, including the 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:39.360 world's first spy satellite, before you come on over to 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:42.280 this one now. I mentioned in the last episode that 0:00:42.320 --> 0:00:46.199 there were tons of projects and historical events all happening 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:49.280 around the formation of ARPA, which was of course the 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:52.479 original name for DARPA, and that meant I had to 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:54.920 pick and choose which ones to talk about and follow 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:57.680 those lines of logic. One of the ones I skipped 0:00:57.720 --> 0:00:59.640 over is one I want to look at before I 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:02.600 move on in the timeline of the agency, and the 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:07.720 project would involve exploding nuclear warheads high above the earth 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:10.240 in an effort to create what would amount to a 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:13.119 force field of sorts in order to protect the United 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:16.920 States from an incoming nuclear strike. This project was based 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:22.160 off the work of a physicist named Nick Christophilis, and 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.200 he had come up with a hypothesis. He believed that 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:29.800 the high energy electrons produced in a nuclear explosion could, 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:35.160 if it happened in Earth's magnetosphere, produce a lasting effect 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:38.520 akin to what we now think of as an electromagnetic 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:42.479 pulse or e m P. These powerful blasts of electromagnetic 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:46.319 energy can overwhelm electronic systems and cause them to fail 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.360 or even to burn out entirely. And it's the sort 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:51.440 of thing that might happen in the event of solar 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:54.120 storms or, as it turns out, the explosion of a 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:59.600 nuclear device. Christophilos believed that the magnetosphere would sustain the 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:04.720 high energy electrons, and anything relying upon electronics that would 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:07.200 try to pass through that barrier would end up failing, 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:11.160 including the arming and firing mechanisms on Soviet I CBM, 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:15.079 so they would just become ballistics. They wouldn't they wouldn't explode, 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.600 they would be inert because the the firing mechanism would 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:24.280 never deploy. A full scale deployment of this approach would 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:28.239 require firing hundreds or even thousands of nuclear warheads into 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:34.120 high altitudes, and they theorized that the the high energy 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:39.240 electrons could last for months in the magnetosphere. Christophilis was 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:43.079 an interesting character. He had been an elevator installer back 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:46.360 in the late nineteen thirties. He worked in an elevator company. 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:48.720 It had its ups and downs, but in his spare 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:52.240 time he was coming up with scientific hypotheses and inventing 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:58.119 theoretical devices, you know, little inventions like particle accelerators. So 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:01.079 while his idea sounded wild, Arbo was willing to give 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:03.840 it a shot because he had shown that he had 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:09.840 a keen understanding of nuclear physics from a self taught perspective, 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:14.280 which seemed pretty remarkable. The test would be called Operation Argus. 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:17.560 The US chose a spot in the South Atlantic Ocean, 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:21.240 essentially between the tip of Africa and the tip of 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:25.800 South America. It was about as remote from human civilization 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:30.000 as you could get without being in the Antarctic. And 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:34.600 this was an enormous endeavor. It wasn't like one launch pad. 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:39.720 We're talking four thousand five military personnel involved. On top 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:42.400 of that, you had scientists, you had engineers, were all 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:45.240 part of the test. The first test happened on August 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:51.520 nineteen fifty eight. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, on that 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:56.240 same day, Ernest Lawrence, one of the strongest advocates for 0:03:56.440 --> 0:04:01.120 nuclear weapons development and testing, passed away. Ernest Lawrence and 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:05.160 Edward Teller had been the gung ho proponents of building 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:08.800 out a nuclear arsenal, including the hydrogen bomb and and 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:12.560 bigger weapons beyond that. He had at the time been 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:16.360 attending a conference dedicated to arriving at a global ban 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:19.920 on nuclear weapons testing. This was essentially by order of 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:24.360 the US government. President Eisenhower and Herb York, the scientific 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:28.120 director over at ARPA, had given him this assignment. It 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:31.320 was kind of ironic that they sent Lawrence there to 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:34.760 talk about a nuclear test band, considering his personal views 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:38.359 on the subject, and that may have contributed to stress, 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:42.239 which in turn may have contributed to his health deteriorating 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:46.520 and then ultimately his passing. The Argus tests, which consisted 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:50.120 of three separate nuclear weapons fired in into the atmosphere 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.200 on three different occasions from late August into early September, 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:58.039 were considered a failure. The explosions did not produce the 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:03.799 effects Christophilos had did. The explosions did create high energy electrons, 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:07.039 and they did exist a bit longer in the magnetosphere 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:10.960 than they might have otherwise, but not at the intensity 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:15.400 and duration that Christophilos had anticipated, not enough to be 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:19.839 a force field protector against incoming I C b ms, 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:22.600 So this defense was not going to pan out. There 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:25.200 was some talk that perhaps the engineers and scientists could 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:26.760 figure out a way to make it work if they 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:30.160 had more time to test, but with the approaching ban 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:33.160 on nuclear testing coming, that would make the matter moot. 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:36.880 The ban on nuclear testing would begin on October thirty one, 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:41.120 ninety eight. Edward Teller, the proponent of nuclear tests and 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.880 friend to Ernest Lawrence, suggested that the United States keep 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:48.000 testing anyway, but if they were to keep those tests 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:50.000 to less than a kill a ton of force, they 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.359 could probably do it and remain undetectable by all the 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:56.760 different powers in the world that were interested in monitoring 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:58.960 such stuff. So he essentially said, if you want to 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.160 do testing on the QT, just keep those explosions below 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:04.839 one kill a ton of force. You can keep on 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:09.280 changing up your designs and approaches to nuclear weaponry as 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:12.000 long as we don't make the boom too big, and 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:14.479 then no one will ever be the wiser, and essentially 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:17.160 Teller said, whether we choose to do this or not, 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:19.280 you can bet the Soviets are going to be doing it. 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:23.359 Tell her was very much of that kind of opinion 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:26.520 of the Soviet Union for all of his life. Now, 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:28.279 when I left off in the last episode, I was 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:32.720 talking about the Corona Project, the aforementioned spy satellites that 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:36.919 had a public cover name called Discoverer. The nature of 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:40.760 the Corona project would remain classified until ninet so for 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:43.960 decades the American public was kept ignorant of what Discoverer 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:47.160 satellites were actually doing up in space, which was taking 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:50.279 photos mostly of the Soviet Union. By the time the 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:54.240 Corona Project was a success, DARPA had a new director. 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:58.720 The original director, Roy W. Johnson, resigned in nineteen fifty 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:01.040 nine after much of our was work in the missile 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:04.080 program got undermined and handed back over to the various 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:08.000 Armed services branches. The morale at ARPA was shaken as 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:12.000 a result. People working in ARPA had the goal of 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:14.800 advancing technology and military applications, and they were starting to 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:18.320 feel like their work was being tossed aside or dismissed. Now, 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:21.520 originally Johnson's replacement was going to be a guy named 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:25.640 Charles Critchfield. Critchfield was a nuclear physicist who had worked 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:29.240 on the Manhattan Project. In nine he was working for 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:33.240 Convey in their General Dynamics department and he received the 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:36.520 request to come be the director of ARPA. But he 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:40.000 had a really good paying gig over at Convey. So 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:42.400 originally he was saying, I'll do it as long as 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:45.400 I can keep my position at Convey, and then I'll 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:48.560 just recuse myself from any project that Convey might be 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.800 part of to avoid the appearance of favoritism. But the 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:55.120 press pushed against that notion, asking how would he be 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:58.640 able to stay objective considering what looked like a really 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:02.680 serious conflict of intra So he withdrew himself from consideration. 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:06.559 Herbert York was given the task to find someone else, 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:08.920 and so he looked at the office of the Secretary 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:12.920 of Defense, and there he found General Austin Betts, who 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:16.880 was the deputy to the Director of Guided Missiles. York 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:20.000 also warned Bets that ARPA was the target of opposition 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:23.600 from pretty much every branch of the military. Bets understood, 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:26.080 and he went about doing his best to mollify the 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:29.880 concerns and the objections of military brass while letting the 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:33.000 administrators at ARPA continue their work as best he could. 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:36.440 Bets gets a lot of credit for stabilizing ARPA in 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:39.599 the wake of Johnson's departure. He also worked with the 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:42.720 branches of the Armed forces to recognize ARPA's place in 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.840 the overall strategy for the United States. According to Bets, 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:48.480 military officials would look at ARPA with some level of 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.480 resentment because they believe that the money that was going 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:55.280 to ARPA could have been better spent in those respective 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:59.880 military branches. Essentially, they're taking our money. Bets did his 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:02.360 best to convince them that ARPA's R and D focus 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:04.920 would be a benefit to the branches in the long run, 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:08.200 and it was not intended to be a competing agency. 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:11.200 I'll have more to say about DARPA's early days in 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:14.240 just a moment, but first let's take a quick break 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:24.959 to thank our sponsor. In nineteen sixty, ARPA announced the 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:30.040 launch of an interdisciplinary Laboratory or IDEL program. The purpose 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:33.000 of this program was to advance materials science, which is 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:36.520 the study of the properties of matter and potential applications, 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:40.040 which again largely had to do with defense. The agency 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:44.000 awarded three contracts that year, each contract lasting four years, 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:47.160 and they all had renewable clauses attached to them. The 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:51.080 three universities that won those first contracts were the University 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:56.199 of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, and Northwestern University. The IDEL program 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:59.160 would continue for twelve years. It would include more universities 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.360 over time, and then ARPA would transfer it to the 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:06.520 National Science Foundation, which subsequently changed the program's name to 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:11.280 the Materials Research Laboratories Program. That program would fund exploratory 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:14.000 research in all sorts of materials, some of which would 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:16.800 end up playing an important role in making better tools 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:20.559 and equipment for the military. Also in nineteen sixty, ARPA 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:24.439 launched a navigation satellite, the first and what would eventually 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:28.760 become a global navigation system. It was called Transit. The 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:31.040 project grew out of R and D work from the 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:36.520 Johns Hopkins Universities Applied Physics Laboratory. The satellite had an 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:40.480 accuracy down to tens of meters, which helped boost map 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:44.760 accuracy considerably. Are BA administered the project until the mid 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:47.920 nineteen sixties, when it would transfer that system to the 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:52.720 United States Navy Transit would ultimately consist of thirty six 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:56.360 satellites in orbit and would serve as the primary US 0:10:56.480 --> 0:11:00.760 satellite based navigation system until nine, when it would be 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:04.680 replaced by the Global Positioning System or GPS. Over the 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:08.000 first two years of ARPA's existence, the budget for its 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:11.559 Defender program, also known as the Ballistics Missile Defense or 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:17.120 BMD project, was about nine hundred million dollars from R 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:20.560 and D to operations, so just under a billion dollars, 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:25.120 an enormous amount of money now and back in nineteen 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:28.839 fifty nine. Nineteen sixty would be a really big year 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:33.000 of changes for DARPA, or again ARPA at the time. 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:36.400 Herbert York, who was the first chief Scientist then he 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:40.199 became Director of Defense Research and Engineering, would step down. 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:43.120 John F. Kennedy became President of the United States, and 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:47.440 as a result, as is frequently the case with administration changes, 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:51.439 you started to see a house cleaning process where people 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:56.360 who had been uh inhabiting certain positions and various agencies 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:59.360 are removed and new people are put in place. But 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:03.240 for a short time, York was essentially the acting Secretary 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:07.840 of Defense until Kennedy's pick, a guy named McNamara would 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:11.440 make his way through confirmation hearings, so for a short while, 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:14.760 Herbert York was effectively in charge of the codes for 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:18.880 nuclear weapons in the United States, like all of them. 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:21.480 This was before the country had established the protocols around 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:25.319 the so called nuclear football, so he was the head 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:29.040 man in charge of the nuclear weapons arsenal at that 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:31.560 point for a few months or a few days really. 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:37.680 Kennedy was concerned about Communist insurgents in Southeast Asia, particularly 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:42.040 in Vietnam, so in response, he began to task officials 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:45.920 with coming up with counter insurgency strategies. ARPA would play 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:49.080 a big role in that, particularly starting in nineteen sixty one. 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:51.520 I'll get back to that in a second, but first, 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:54.920 in nineteen sixty one, after spending just a little more 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:59.199 than a year as the director of ARPA, General Betts resigned. 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:03.719 His placement was a guy named Dr Jack p. Runa, 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:07.120 an electrical engineer who was a professor in my t now. 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:10.440 Runa was the first scientist to head up our PA 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:13.720 from a director level. He would step down in nineteene, 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:16.160 but in a short time as director he would oversee 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:20.080 many important projects and developments, including the founding of the 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:23.320 Information Processing Techniques Office or I p t O. More 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:28.440 on that in our next episode. As part of Project Defender, 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:32.840 ARPA would reach out to another young organization called Jason. 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:38.240 Jason was a for profit scientific research group largely dedicated 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:42.079 to tackling problems related to defense and military applications. Is 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:46.119 named after the Greek hero Jason, and it was a secretive, 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:49.640 exclusive group of some of the most talented scientists in 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:54.240 the United States. Super duper hush hush, though, and these 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:59.640 scientists would get top level security clearance to various programs. 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:03.360 Through Out its run, ARPA would ask Jason to pitch 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:08.360 ideas that would improve the Defender missile defense program. One 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:11.040 such proposal they came up with was to equip every 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:15.440 US warhead with decoys to confound the Soviet Union's anti 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:18.840 ballistic missile defense system. So in this case, there wasn't 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.960 so much as defending against incoming missiles as to make 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:26.400 our outgoing missiles more effective. Essentially, every warhead would deploy 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.520 a decoy or more than one up to five to 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:32.720 improve its chances of making it through the defenses of 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:36.720 the USSR to detonate at its intended target. The strategy 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:40.640 became known as Penetration AIDS or pen AIDS for short. 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:44.440 This would later grow into another project called pen X, 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:48.760 in which scientists work on creating multiple independently targeted reentry 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:53.320 vehicles also known as merv's m I r vs. The 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:56.040 Jason Group was being funded by ARPA, but it was 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:59.560 so secretive and its work was so important to US 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:04.000 defense that the scientists were able to put tough restrictions 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:09.200 on ARPA's involvement with their work, like crazy restrictions. They 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.640 demanded that they would be allowed to to work on 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:16.600 their own solving whatever problems were assigned to them without 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:20.840 outside interference. And the only person from ARPA who was 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:23.920 allowed to attend their summer sessions. And this was a 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:27.840 concession they made uh most of the members of JASON, 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:30.080 by the way, we're teaching throughout most of the year, 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:32.520 the summer was when they would have time off, and 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:34.520 so they would dedicate that to working on these problems. 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:36.680 The only person from ARPA who could go to this 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:40.280 summer session was the director himself, Jack Runo. No one 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:42.240 else from MARPA would be allowed to hang out with 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:47.160 the scientists, and eventually RUNA agreed to this because they 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.560 needed these guys. The Jason scientists also worked on on 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:56.360 a super top secret project on directed energy beam weapons. 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:58.840 So one of the important members of the Jason group 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:02.720 was a guy named Charles Towns. Charles Towns built the 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:07.240 first maser that's the microwave based precursor of the laser, 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:10.200 so the team wanted to explore the possibility of using 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:15.520 directed energy beams to send blasts at, say, an incoming missile, 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.480 in order to disarm it. There have been numerous directed 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:22.880 energy beam product projects at DARPA. Most of those remain classified, 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:25.240 so we can only guess as to how far along 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:28.440 they have come, although a lot of people will say 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:31.520 that the technology being worked on at various projects that 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:34.920 are funded by DARPA tends to be up to ten 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:38.320 years ahead of the stuff you would see out in 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:42.200 the quote unquote real world, so that's something to think about. Meanwhile, 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:45.840 in Hawaii, ARPA began a project called the ARPA mid 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:49.920 Course Optical Station or AMOS A m o S in 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:53.400 nineteen sixty one. This was an observatory that was meant 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:58.160 to detect, image, and take measurements of space objects like satellites, payloads, 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:01.800 and other stuff like miss re entering the Airth's atmosphere. 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:05.440 The facility is on top of a mountain in Maui, Hawaii. 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:08.320 It would take years to build this facility and the 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:10.959 instruments needed to carry out the task, but it all 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:14.000 started in nineteen sixty one. In nineteen sixty nine it 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:17.359 was an established facility. It entered into its second phase 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:19.880 of operation, in which would measure re entry bodies as 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:23.639 part of the Advanced Ballistic re Entry System project. And 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:27.760 in nineteen four DARPA. At that point the agency's name 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:30.159 had changed kind of and it had changed back. In 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:32.639 nineteen seventy two they would change back to ARPA and 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:35.879 then back to DARPA again. We'll get there anyway. In 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:39.200 ninety four, DARPA transferred the facility over to the US 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:41.879 Air Force to become part of the Air Force Space 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:46.000 Tracking System. In ninety three, AMOS got a name change, 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:48.879 at least the acronym has now changed. Now it stands 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:52.919 for Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site. So remember 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:55.960 when I talked about the counterinsurgency efforts that Kennedy was 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:59.119 interested in. Well, in nineteen sixty one that took shape 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:03.800 as a huge initiative, probably the third biggest project DARPA 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:08.680 was tackling behind Defender and Vila Villa being the project 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:13.800 to to be able to detect nuclear weapons detonations. This 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:16.800 project was called Agile and it was a joint effort 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:19.600 between ARPA. There was a group of advisors called the 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:23.920 Military Assistance Advisory Group or m a a G, and 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:28.879 South Vietnam officials like the President of South Vietnam. The 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:32.240 project would have to deal with an entirely different approach 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:35.760 than the counterballistics work that ARPA had been involved with. 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:40.400 This was a major switching of gears from missile warfare 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:43.840 to how to get a technological advantage over enemy forces 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:47.720 that were at home fighting in say, jungle environments. One 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:52.040 of the champions project Agile was a guy named William Godal, 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:56.040 and intelligence operative who worked with ARPA and who acted 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:59.879 as sort of a liaison between various intelligence agencies and ARPA. 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:03.320 While many of the scientists at ARPA came from a 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:07.199 perspective of advancing the US capabilities in nuclear warfare, Godal 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:09.120 was looking at things from a different point of view. 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:13.480 He was interested in psychological warfare and the alleged brainwashing 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.920 techniques used by communists in the fifties and early sixties, 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:19.800 and he advocated for the creation of an ARPA branch 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:24.520 in Southeast Asia. Kennedy agreed, and the agency established the 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:28.640 ARPA Combat Development and Test Center. More on what they 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:31.600 did in just a moment, but first another quick break 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:42.119 to thank our sponsor. Godal wanted to develop techniques to 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:46.560 teach the South Vietnamese military how to combat insurgents, preferably 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:48.919 in a way that would not require the United States 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:52.280 to get directly involved, and in that way, the United 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:55.719 States could push back against the spread of Communism without 0:19:56.200 --> 0:20:00.399 being on the ground in a war. So the thought 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.520 was that Project Agile would develop not just technology, but 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:06.840 best practices for the South Vietnamese military to use to 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:10.000 fight off the Viet Cong and the spread of communism. 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:13.320 It was the most active ARPA would get in actual 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:18.320 military operations. One of the many developments under Project Agile, 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:23.480 which covered tons of different subprojects UH, and one of 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:25.640 the most tragic. In fact, I would argue is probably 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:30.880 the most tragic of the projects that Agile was focused on, 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:35.200 was the development of the so called rainbow agents. These 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:39.399 were chemical agents and they were meant to kill off vegetation. UH. 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:42.920 They were herbicides. They were designed to remove jungle cover 0:20:43.359 --> 0:20:46.000 and also to take away any advantage insurgents might have 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:50.600 while engaging in guerrilla warfare and to affect food supply. 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:54.760 Although Godal was largely looking at this as a way 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:58.240 of taking away the jungle cover to remove that advantage 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:01.560 that the viet Cong held. The most famous of these 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:05.639 rainbow agents was, of course, agent Orange. Now agent orange 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:09.680 is a mixture of two major herbicides, and it also 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:14.000 happens to be incredibly toxic to human beings. The President 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:17.960 of Vietnam, President d M, wanted to use herbicide in 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:23.639 large regions which would affect both insurgents and innocent Vietnamese citizens. 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:27.119 They are beside would affect jungles and food crops, including 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:29.880 food crops just grown by innocent people, not people who 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:33.520 were feeding the viet Cong. D M's goal was to 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:37.480 make the viet Cong, those those communists insurgents, dependent upon 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:40.600 the South Vietnamese government for food and that would force 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:44.239 them to obey him. So he took this tool that 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:47.480 ARPA had created, this herbicide, and he put to use 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:51.680 in a wide area, affecting thousands of people. Agent orange 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:55.280 can damage genes and it can lead to birth defects 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:59.479 and offspring. It can lead to higher instances of cancer 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:01.520 to people have been exposed to it. It's one of 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:04.719 the most terrible weapons created by the United States and 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:08.600 actually put to use in warfare. I also think it's 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:12.639 an example of some of the mental gymnastics that William 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:15.320 Goldal was able to go through to justify the existence 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:20.000 of this program. To begin with, the Geneva Convention expressly forbids, 0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:25.200 chemical and biological weapons, and if you use them, you're 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:28.160 going to be the target of the international communities scorn 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:31.720 and worse, and the United States did not want to 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:36.320 to court that scorn. But destroying an enemy's food supply 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:39.760 is not against the Geneva Convention. You can do that 0:22:40.280 --> 0:22:43.520 and it's quote unquote fair. The rules of what is 0:22:43.560 --> 0:22:48.879 and isn't fair and warfare still kind of perplex me. 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:52.800 It's a weird thing to think about that something that 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:56.080 is terrible to people in one way is not against 0:22:56.080 --> 0:22:58.080 the rules, and something that's terrible to people in a 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:02.000 different way is against the rules. Blows my mind anyway. 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:05.280 Framing this project as targeting not the people but their 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:09.800 food and the jungle itself wasn't against the Geneva Convention, 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:12.720 at least not on the surface. However, since the chemicals 0:23:12.720 --> 0:23:16.280 were distributed by plane or helicopter, which meant they were 0:23:16.359 --> 0:23:20.600 sprayed over large, often populated areas, I think it's kind 0:23:20.600 --> 0:23:22.439 of hard to say we were just aiming for the 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:24.919 jungle and the food. We didn't mean to get the 0:23:24.920 --> 0:23:29.080 people to Despite all that, President Kennedy approved the use 0:23:29.119 --> 0:23:31.760 of the Arab side, though admittedly he did cut the 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:35.280 scope of the proposed use by a significant amount. Even so, 0:23:35.600 --> 0:23:39.040 by the end of the Vietnam War, about nineteen million 0:23:39.359 --> 0:23:43.159 gallons of the stuff had been unleashed in Vietnam. The 0:23:43.280 --> 0:23:46.080 estimates on the number of Vietnamese directly exposed to the 0:23:46.119 --> 0:23:49.439 chemicals range from two point one million people on the 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:53.240 conservative side up to four point eight million people. It's 0:23:53.400 --> 0:23:59.159 truly horrifying stuff. Now. The documentation for Project Agile outlines 0:23:59.280 --> 0:24:04.480 eight sub project areas. There's tactical unit weapons systems, area 0:24:04.640 --> 0:24:10.840 fire weapons systems, remote area mobility and logistics systems, communication systems, 0:24:11.200 --> 0:24:15.920 combat surveillance and target acquisition systems, individual and special projects, 0:24:16.240 --> 0:24:21.480 technical planning and programming, and finally, research and exploratory development. 0:24:22.000 --> 0:24:24.280 The work in Project Agile would lead to stuff like 0:24:24.440 --> 0:24:28.040 flame throwers, and then the adoption of the M sixteen 0:24:28.359 --> 0:24:32.040 as the infantry weapon of choice for US soldiers. The 0:24:32.160 --> 0:24:36.000 M sixteen was based off the cult A R fifteen, 0:24:36.280 --> 0:24:39.040 a style of rifle that today has a pretty horrific 0:24:39.119 --> 0:24:43.400 reputation in various shooting incidents. The A R fifteen fires 0:24:43.480 --> 0:24:47.520 five five six ammunition five point five six millimeter ammunition. 0:24:47.880 --> 0:24:52.160 During Project Agile, the US military mostly was using the 0:24:52.280 --> 0:24:56.320