November 13, 2018 • 32 mins
From weather satellites to horrifying herbicides, we explore some of DARPA's projects during its first years of operations. How was this agency meant to counteract missile attacks and insurgent uprisings?
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from house
stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and I love
all things tech. And this is the second part in
my series about DARPA, the R and D arm of
the Department of Defense. If you have not listened to
(00:26):
the previous episode, I would recommend you go back and
listen to that one first to hear about the founding
of the agency and its first few projects, including the
world's first spy satellite, before you come on over to
this one now. I mentioned in the last episode that
there were tons of projects and historical events all happening
around the formation of ARPA, which was of course the
(00:49):
original name for DARPA, and that meant I had to
pick and choose which ones to talk about and follow
those lines of logic. One of the ones I skipped
over is one I want to look at before I
move on in the timeline of the agency, and the
project would involve exploding nuclear warheads high above the earth
in an effort to create what would amount to a
(01:10):
force field of sorts in order to protect the United
States from an incoming nuclear strike. This project was based
off the work of a physicist named Nick Christophilis, and
he had come up with a hypothesis. He believed that
the high energy electrons produced in a nuclear explosion could,
(01:30):
if it happened in Earth's magnetosphere, produce a lasting effect
akin to what we now think of as an electromagnetic
pulse or e m P. These powerful blasts of electromagnetic
energy can overwhelm electronic systems and cause them to fail
or even to burn out entirely. And it's the sort
of thing that might happen in the event of solar
(01:51):
storms or, as it turns out, the explosion of a
nuclear device. Christophilos believed that the magnetosphere would sustain the
high energy electrons, and anything relying upon electronics that would
try to pass through that barrier would end up failing,
including the arming and firing mechanisms on Soviet I CBM,
so they would just become ballistics. They wouldn't they wouldn't explode,
(02:15):
they would be inert because the the firing mechanism would
never deploy. A full scale deployment of this approach would
require firing hundreds or even thousands of nuclear warheads into
high altitudes, and they theorized that the the high energy
electrons could last for months in the magnetosphere. Christophilis was
(02:39):
an interesting character. He had been an elevator installer back
in the late nineteen thirties. He worked in an elevator company.
It had its ups and downs, but in his spare
time he was coming up with scientific hypotheses and inventing
theoretical devices, you know, little inventions like particle accelerators. So
while his idea sounded wild, Arbo was willing to give
(03:01):
it a shot because he had shown that he had
a keen understanding of nuclear physics from a self taught perspective,
which seemed pretty remarkable. The test would be called Operation Argus.
The US chose a spot in the South Atlantic Ocean,
essentially between the tip of Africa and the tip of
(03:21):
South America. It was about as remote from human civilization
as you could get without being in the Antarctic. And
this was an enormous endeavor. It wasn't like one launch pad.
We're talking four thousand five military personnel involved. On top
of that, you had scientists, you had engineers, were all
(03:42):
part of the test. The first test happened on August
nineteen fifty eight. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, on that
same day, Ernest Lawrence, one of the strongest advocates for
nuclear weapons development and testing, passed away. Ernest Lawrence and
Edward Teller had been the gung ho proponents of building
(04:05):
out a nuclear arsenal, including the hydrogen bomb and and
bigger weapons beyond that. He had at the time been
attending a conference dedicated to arriving at a global ban
on nuclear weapons testing. This was essentially by order of
the US government. President Eisenhower and Herb York, the scientific
director over at ARPA, had given him this assignment. It
(04:28):
was kind of ironic that they sent Lawrence there to
talk about a nuclear test band, considering his personal views
on the subject, and that may have contributed to stress,
which in turn may have contributed to his health deteriorating
and then ultimately his passing. The Argus tests, which consisted
of three separate nuclear weapons fired in into the atmosphere
(04:50):
on three different occasions from late August into early September,
were considered a failure. The explosions did not produce the
effects Christophilos had did. The explosions did create high energy electrons,
and they did exist a bit longer in the magnetosphere
than they might have otherwise, but not at the intensity
(05:11):
and duration that Christophilos had anticipated, not enough to be
a force field protector against incoming I C b ms,
So this defense was not going to pan out. There
was some talk that perhaps the engineers and scientists could
figure out a way to make it work if they
had more time to test, but with the approaching ban
on nuclear testing coming, that would make the matter moot.
(05:33):
The ban on nuclear testing would begin on October thirty one,
ninety eight. Edward Teller, the proponent of nuclear tests and
friend to Ernest Lawrence, suggested that the United States keep
testing anyway, but if they were to keep those tests
to less than a kill a ton of force, they
could probably do it and remain undetectable by all the
different powers in the world that were interested in monitoring
(05:56):
such stuff. So he essentially said, if you want to
do testing on the QT, just keep those explosions below
one kill a ton of force. You can keep on
changing up your designs and approaches to nuclear weaponry as
long as we don't make the boom too big, and
then no one will ever be the wiser, and essentially
Teller said, whether we choose to do this or not,
(06:17):
you can bet the Soviets are going to be doing it.
Tell her was very much of that kind of opinion
of the Soviet Union for all of his life. Now,
when I left off in the last episode, I was
talking about the Corona Project, the aforementioned spy satellites that
had a public cover name called Discoverer. The nature of
the Corona project would remain classified until ninet so for
(06:40):
decades the American public was kept ignorant of what Discoverer
satellites were actually doing up in space, which was taking
photos mostly of the Soviet Union. By the time the
Corona Project was a success, DARPA had a new director.
The original director, Roy W. Johnson, resigned in nineteen fifty
nine after much of our was work in the missile
(07:01):
program got undermined and handed back over to the various
Armed services branches. The morale at ARPA was shaken as
a result. People working in ARPA had the goal of
advancing technology and military applications, and they were starting to
feel like their work was being tossed aside or dismissed. Now,
originally Johnson's replacement was going to be a guy named
(07:21):
Charles Critchfield. Critchfield was a nuclear physicist who had worked
on the Manhattan Project. In nine he was working for
Convey in their General Dynamics department and he received the
request to come be the director of ARPA. But he
had a really good paying gig over at Convey. So
originally he was saying, I'll do it as long as
(07:42):
I can keep my position at Convey, and then I'll
just recuse myself from any project that Convey might be
part of to avoid the appearance of favoritism. But the
press pushed against that notion, asking how would he be
able to stay objective considering what looked like a really
serious conflict of intra So he withdrew himself from consideration.
(08:03):
Herbert York was given the task to find someone else,
and so he looked at the office of the Secretary
of Defense, and there he found General Austin Betts, who
was the deputy to the Director of Guided Missiles. York
also warned Bets that ARPA was the target of opposition
from pretty much every branch of the military. Bets understood,
(08:23):
and he went about doing his best to mollify the
concerns and the objections of military brass while letting the
administrators at ARPA continue their work as best he could.
Bets gets a lot of credit for stabilizing ARPA in
the wake of Johnson's departure. He also worked with the
branches of the Armed forces to recognize ARPA's place in
the overall strategy for the United States. According to Bets,
(08:46):
military officials would look at ARPA with some level of
resentment because they believe that the money that was going
to ARPA could have been better spent in those respective
military branches. Essentially, they're taking our money. Bets did his
best to convince them that ARPA's R and D focus
would be a benefit to the branches in the long run,
and it was not intended to be a competing agency.
(09:08):
I'll have more to say about DARPA's early days in
just a moment, but first let's take a quick break
to thank our sponsor. In nineteen sixty, ARPA announced the
launch of an interdisciplinary Laboratory or IDEL program. The purpose
(09:30):
of this program was to advance materials science, which is
the study of the properties of matter and potential applications,
which again largely had to do with defense. The agency
awarded three contracts that year, each contract lasting four years,
and they all had renewable clauses attached to them. The
three universities that won those first contracts were the University
(09:51):
of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, and Northwestern University. The IDEL program
would continue for twelve years. It would include more universities
over time, and then ARPA would transfer it to the
National Science Foundation, which subsequently changed the program's name to
the Materials Research Laboratories Program. That program would fund exploratory
(10:11):
research in all sorts of materials, some of which would
end up playing an important role in making better tools
and equipment for the military. Also in nineteen sixty, ARPA
launched a navigation satellite, the first and what would eventually
become a global navigation system. It was called Transit. The
project grew out of R and D work from the
Johns Hopkins Universities Applied Physics Laboratory. The satellite had an
(10:36):
accuracy down to tens of meters, which helped boost map
accuracy considerably. Are BA administered the project until the mid
nineteen sixties, when it would transfer that system to the
United States Navy Transit would ultimately consist of thirty six
satellites in orbit and would serve as the primary US
satellite based navigation system until nine, when it would be
(11:00):
replaced by the Global Positioning System or GPS. Over the
first two years of ARPA's existence, the budget for its
Defender program, also known as the Ballistics Missile Defense or
BMD project, was about nine hundred million dollars from R
and D to operations, so just under a billion dollars,
an enormous amount of money now and back in nineteen
(11:25):
fifty nine. Nineteen sixty would be a really big year
of changes for DARPA, or again ARPA at the time.
Herbert York, who was the first chief Scientist then he
became Director of Defense Research and Engineering, would step down.
John F. Kennedy became President of the United States, and
as a result, as is frequently the case with administration changes,
(11:47):
you started to see a house cleaning process where people
who had been uh inhabiting certain positions and various agencies
are removed and new people are put in place. But
for a short time, York was essentially the acting Secretary
of Defense until Kennedy's pick, a guy named McNamara would
(12:08):
make his way through confirmation hearings, so for a short while,
Herbert York was effectively in charge of the codes for
nuclear weapons in the United States, like all of them.
This was before the country had established the protocols around
the so called nuclear football, so he was the head
man in charge of the nuclear weapons arsenal at that
(12:29):
point for a few months or a few days really.
Kennedy was concerned about Communist insurgents in Southeast Asia, particularly
in Vietnam, so in response, he began to task officials
with coming up with counter insurgency strategies. ARPA would play
a big role in that, particularly starting in nineteen sixty one.
(12:49):
I'll get back to that in a second, but first,
in nineteen sixty one, after spending just a little more
than a year as the director of ARPA, General Betts resigned.
His placement was a guy named Dr Jack p. Runa,
an electrical engineer who was a professor in my t now.
Runa was the first scientist to head up our PA
(13:10):
from a director level. He would step down in nineteene,
but in a short time as director he would oversee
many important projects and developments, including the founding of the
Information Processing Techniques Office or I p t O. More
on that in our next episode. As part of Project Defender,
ARPA would reach out to another young organization called Jason.
(13:33):
Jason was a for profit scientific research group largely dedicated
to tackling problems related to defense and military applications. Is
named after the Greek hero Jason, and it was a secretive,
exclusive group of some of the most talented scientists in
the United States. Super duper hush hush, though, and these
(13:54):
scientists would get top level security clearance to various programs.
Through Out its run, ARPA would ask Jason to pitch
ideas that would improve the Defender missile defense program. One
such proposal they came up with was to equip every
US warhead with decoys to confound the Soviet Union's anti
(14:15):
ballistic missile defense system. So in this case, there wasn't
so much as defending against incoming missiles as to make
our outgoing missiles more effective. Essentially, every warhead would deploy
a decoy or more than one up to five to
improve its chances of making it through the defenses of
the USSR to detonate at its intended target. The strategy
(14:36):
became known as Penetration AIDS or pen AIDS for short.
This would later grow into another project called pen X,
in which scientists work on creating multiple independently targeted reentry
vehicles also known as merv's m I r vs. The
Jason Group was being funded by ARPA, but it was
so secretive and its work was so important to US
(14:59):
defense that the scientists were able to put tough restrictions
on ARPA's involvement with their work, like crazy restrictions. They
demanded that they would be allowed to to work on
their own solving whatever problems were assigned to them without
outside interference. And the only person from ARPA who was
(15:20):
allowed to attend their summer sessions. And this was a
concession they made uh most of the members of JASON,
by the way, we're teaching throughout most of the year,
the summer was when they would have time off, and
so they would dedicate that to working on these problems.
The only person from ARPA who could go to this
summer session was the director himself, Jack Runo. No one
else from MARPA would be allowed to hang out with
(15:42):
the scientists, and eventually RUNA agreed to this because they
needed these guys. The Jason scientists also worked on on
a super top secret project on directed energy beam weapons.
So one of the important members of the Jason group
was a guy named Charles Towns. Charles Towns built the
(16:02):
first maser that's the microwave based precursor of the laser,
so the team wanted to explore the possibility of using
directed energy beams to send blasts at, say, an incoming missile,
in order to disarm it. There have been numerous directed
energy beam product projects at DARPA. Most of those remain classified,
(16:23):
so we can only guess as to how far along
they have come, although a lot of people will say
that the technology being worked on at various projects that
are funded by DARPA tends to be up to ten
years ahead of the stuff you would see out in
the quote unquote real world, so that's something to think about. Meanwhile,
in Hawaii, ARPA began a project called the ARPA mid
(16:45):
Course Optical Station or AMOS A m o S in
nineteen sixty one. This was an observatory that was meant
to detect, image, and take measurements of space objects like satellites, payloads,
and other stuff like miss re entering the Airth's atmosphere.
The facility is on top of a mountain in Maui, Hawaii.
It would take years to build this facility and the
(17:08):
instruments needed to carry out the task, but it all
started in nineteen sixty one. In nineteen sixty nine it
was an established facility. It entered into its second phase
of operation, in which would measure re entry bodies as
part of the Advanced Ballistic re Entry System project. And
in nineteen four DARPA. At that point the agency's name
had changed kind of and it had changed back. In
(17:30):
nineteen seventy two they would change back to ARPA and
then back to DARPA again. We'll get there anyway. In
ninety four, DARPA transferred the facility over to the US
Air Force to become part of the Air Force Space
Tracking System. In ninety three, AMOS got a name change,
at least the acronym has now changed. Now it stands
for Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site. So remember
(17:52):
when I talked about the counterinsurgency efforts that Kennedy was
interested in. Well, in nineteen sixty one that took shape
as a huge initiative, probably the third biggest project DARPA
was tackling behind Defender and Vila Villa being the project
to to be able to detect nuclear weapons detonations. This
(18:13):
project was called Agile and it was a joint effort
between ARPA. There was a group of advisors called the
Military Assistance Advisory Group or m a a G, and
South Vietnam officials like the President of South Vietnam. The
project would have to deal with an entirely different approach
than the counterballistics work that ARPA had been involved with.
(18:36):
This was a major switching of gears from missile warfare
to how to get a technological advantage over enemy forces
that were at home fighting in say, jungle environments. One
of the champions project Agile was a guy named William Godal,
and intelligence operative who worked with ARPA and who acted
as sort of a liaison between various intelligence agencies and ARPA.
(19:00):
While many of the scientists at ARPA came from a
perspective of advancing the US capabilities in nuclear warfare, Godal
was looking at things from a different point of view.
He was interested in psychological warfare and the alleged brainwashing
techniques used by communists in the fifties and early sixties,
and he advocated for the creation of an ARPA branch
in Southeast Asia. Kennedy agreed, and the agency established the
(19:24):
ARPA Combat Development and Test Center. More on what they
did in just a moment, but first another quick break
to thank our sponsor. Godal wanted to develop techniques to
teach the South Vietnamese military how to combat insurgents, preferably
(19:46):
in a way that would not require the United States
to get directly involved, and in that way, the United
States could push back against the spread of Communism without
being on the ground in a war. So the thought
was that Project Agile would develop not just technology, but
best practices for the South Vietnamese military to use to
(20:06):
fight off the Viet Cong and the spread of communism.
It was the most active ARPA would get in actual
military operations. One of the many developments under Project Agile,
which covered tons of different subprojects UH, and one of
the most tragic. In fact, I would argue is probably
the most tragic of the projects that Agile was focused on,
(20:31):
was the development of the so called rainbow agents. These
were chemical agents and they were meant to kill off vegetation. UH.
They were herbicides. They were designed to remove jungle cover
and also to take away any advantage insurgents might have
while engaging in guerrilla warfare and to affect food supply.
Although Godal was largely looking at this as a way
(20:54):
of taking away the jungle cover to remove that advantage
that the viet Cong held. The most famous of these
rainbow agents was, of course, agent Orange. Now agent orange
is a mixture of two major herbicides, and it also
happens to be incredibly toxic to human beings. The President
of Vietnam, President d M, wanted to use herbicide in
(21:18):
large regions which would affect both insurgents and innocent Vietnamese citizens.
They are beside would affect jungles and food crops, including
food crops just grown by innocent people, not people who
were feeding the viet Cong. D M's goal was to
make the viet Cong, those those communists insurgents, dependent upon
the South Vietnamese government for food and that would force
(21:40):
them to obey him. So he took this tool that
ARPA had created, this herbicide, and he put to use
in a wide area, affecting thousands of people. Agent orange
can damage genes and it can lead to birth defects
and offspring. It can lead to higher instances of cancer
to people have been exposed to it. It's one of
(22:01):
the most terrible weapons created by the United States and
actually put to use in warfare. I also think it's
an example of some of the mental gymnastics that William
Goldal was able to go through to justify the existence
of this program. To begin with, the Geneva Convention expressly forbids,
chemical and biological weapons, and if you use them, you're
(22:25):
going to be the target of the international communities scorn
and worse, and the United States did not want to
to court that scorn. But destroying an enemy's food supply
is not against the Geneva Convention. You can do that
and it's quote unquote fair. The rules of what is
and isn't fair and warfare still kind of perplex me.
(22:49):
It's a weird thing to think about that something that
is terrible to people in one way is not against
the rules, and something that's terrible to people in a
different way is against the rules. Blows my mind anyway.
Framing this project as targeting not the people but their
food and the jungle itself wasn't against the Geneva Convention,
(23:10):
at least not on the surface. However, since the chemicals
were distributed by plane or helicopter, which meant they were
sprayed over large, often populated areas, I think it's kind
of hard to say we were just aiming for the
jungle and the food. We didn't mean to get the
people to Despite all that, President Kennedy approved the use
of the Arab side, though admittedly he did cut the
(23:31):
scope of the proposed use by a significant amount. Even so,
by the end of the Vietnam War, about nineteen million
gallons of the stuff had been unleashed in Vietnam. The
estimates on the number of Vietnamese directly exposed to the
chemicals range from two point one million people on the
conservative side up to four point eight million people. It's
(23:53):
truly horrifying stuff. Now. The documentation for Project Agile outlines
eight sub project areas. There's tactical unit weapons systems, area
fire weapons systems, remote area mobility and logistics systems, communication systems,
combat surveillance and target acquisition systems, individual and special projects,
(24:16):
technical planning and programming, and finally, research and exploratory development.
The work in Project Agile would lead to stuff like
flame throwers, and then the adoption of the M sixteen
as the infantry weapon of choice for US soldiers. The
M sixteen was based off the cult A R fifteen,
(24:36):
a style of rifle that today has a pretty horrific
reputation in various shooting incidents. The A R fifteen fires
five five six ammunition five point five six millimeter ammunition.
During Project Agile, the US military mostly was using the
I fourteen rifle for its soldiers, uh the M fourteen
(24:56):
fires a heavy seven point six two millimeter ammunition seven
six to The prevailing wisdom was that the five six
mma would not pack the punch needed in US military operations.
Part of the Project Agile had ARPA scientists heading up
projects to improve and test A R fifteen's to change
them into a new type of light assault rifle so
(25:19):
that the lighter weapon could replace this heavier M fourteen
and it would be more useful to Vietnamese soldiers, who
the group viewed as being smaller than American soldiers and
therefore they would need lighter weapons. I'm not going to
comment on that other than to say that that was
there conclusion anyway that led to the M sixteen, which
(25:42):
until fairly recently was the primary weapon of the U
S military. It's since been largely replaced by the M
four carbine, which is another five five six m O gun. Now,
I'm going to spare you guys the language that's in
the reports on the performance of the A R fifteen's
that ARPA had issued to US Special Forces for lie
field tests, meaning that soldiers were tearing this into actual
(26:04):
combat scenarios. Suffice it to say that the weapons were
found to be very effective, and the language makes that clear,
and how deadly the weapons were in actual combat situations.
It's really disturbing stuff. Actually, how casually these reports refer
to the lethality of the weapons. It's very matter of fact,
which I get, I suppose from a you know, observing
(26:27):
and evaluing the performance of a tool. But when you
realize that the execution of that tool is the literal
end of someone's life, it's pretty sobering stuff. Other parts
of Project Agile seemed fairly bizarre. For example, there was
a canine program that was part of Project Agile. In
this program, are But proposed developing a chemical scent that
(26:51):
dogs could detect but humans could not. And the idea
was that Viennamese soldiers could quietly and secretly mark large
groups of people with a chemical or maybe even have
an aircraft pass overhead and spray it out. The chemical
would be harmless, but it would be detectable by these canines,
and then Vietnamese soldiers could use dogs to track people
(27:12):
who turned up in suspicious places. As a result, AREPA
tested a chemical they called Squalingens, was made from shark
and fish liver oil. Uh The tests proved promising when
they were conducted over at Fort Benning, Georgia, not too
far from where I am. But then they took it
over to Vietnam and discovered that the dogs would not
be able to follow the scent for very long in
(27:33):
the hotter, more humid environments. Are But also developed a
quiet power glider meant to fly just over the jungle
canopy silently or near silently over in Vietnam. Rather, of course,
are But did not developed this itself. It funded the
development of this. They first reached out to the Navy
(27:54):
and got two unpowered SGS two thirty two gliders. Those
were made by a being called the Schweitzer Aircraft Corporation.
AREPA then handed those over to the company Lockeed, which
used its skunk Works Special Projects division. Skunk Works is
where all the super top secret work at Lockheed happens,
and Lockheed would install Volkswagen air cooled engines in the
(28:17):
gliders that would connect to the propellers. The aircraft ran
pretty quietly, though not as quietly as the Army would like.
They eventually would send the gliders back to Lockheed to
make some changes. Now. At one point there was talk
of experimenting with radar absorbing paint to reduce the radar
signature of these gliders, but the team ultimately decided that
that was beyond the scope of their project. The gliders
(28:40):
were in limited use during Vietnam, but more importantly, they
led to the development of other spy plane technology, stealth technology,
and unmanned drones. Project Agile also included calls for new
types of shotguns, new rifle grenades, uh sound cannons, cannons
that would actually use sound waves as a shock deliverer,
(29:04):
and bombs that could detonate between the top of a
jungle canopy and the ground below. And besides weapons, the
agency was funding research and stuff like anti venom kits
in the event of a snake bite. Uh. They were
creating leach repellent, you know, glamorous stuff. They're also funding
projects that would retrofit existing vehicles so that they could
(29:25):
move more effectively through the jungle environments. And they began
to work to develop more advanced communication systems to help
with logistics. And it was a huge undertaking and this
would fuel research for several years and result in many
more changes in US military operations, not all of them
good ones. Project Agile would continue until nineteen seventy four,
(29:45):
when ARPO would officially conclude it. Actually at that point
they were called DARPA. Between its launch and its end,
ARPO would officially kick off the Information Processing Techniques Office
and put J. C. R. Licklider in charge of it.
Liquilide Or would begin several projects that would have an
enormous impact, not just on the United States but the
(30:06):
entire world. That would include the first steps towards the
establishment of the Internet. Now I'll talk about that more
in the next episode. For now, let's conclude this second
part of our story about DARPA. We will continue our
look in our next episode exploring some of the more
bizarre things that DARP has been involved with, as well
(30:29):
as the the baby steps that would lead to the Internet.
And keep in mind every single thing I've talked about,
every project I've talked about, I could do a full
episode or maybe a couple of episodes to really cover
because there are tons of implications there, things that would
spin off and become technological advancements in other areas. And
(30:52):
it's all fascinating stuff sometimes terrifying as well. But if
you have any requests, maybe there's something you heard in
this episode, or maybe there's some other tech topic you
would like me to cover, go on and visit tech
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Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from house
stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and I love
all things tech. And this is the second part in
my series about DARPA, the R and D arm of
the Department of Defense. If you have not listened to
(00:26):
the previous episode, I would recommend you go back and
listen to that one first to hear about the founding
of the agency and its first few projects, including the
world's first spy satellite, before you come on over to
this one now. I mentioned in the last episode that
there were tons of projects and historical events all happening
around the formation of ARPA, which was of course the
(00:49):
original name for DARPA, and that meant I had to
pick and choose which ones to talk about and follow
those lines of logic. One of the ones I skipped
over is one I want to look at before I
move on in the timeline of the agency, and the
project would involve exploding nuclear warheads high above the earth
in an effort to create what would amount to a
(01:10):
force field of sorts in order to protect the United
States from an incoming nuclear strike. This project was based
off the work of a physicist named Nick Christophilis, and
he had come up with a hypothesis. He believed that
the high energy electrons produced in a nuclear explosion could,
(01:30):
if it happened in Earth's magnetosphere, produce a lasting effect
akin to what we now think of as an electromagnetic
pulse or e m P. These powerful blasts of electromagnetic
energy can overwhelm electronic systems and cause them to fail
or even to burn out entirely. And it's the sort
of thing that might happen in the event of solar
(01:51):
storms or, as it turns out, the explosion of a
nuclear device. Christophilos believed that the magnetosphere would sustain the
high energy electrons, and anything relying upon electronics that would
try to pass through that barrier would end up failing,
including the arming and firing mechanisms on Soviet I CBM,
so they would just become ballistics. They wouldn't they wouldn't explode,
(02:15):
they would be inert because the the firing mechanism would
never deploy. A full scale deployment of this approach would
require firing hundreds or even thousands of nuclear warheads into
high altitudes, and they theorized that the the high energy
electrons could last for months in the magnetosphere. Christophilis was
(02:39):
an interesting character. He had been an elevator installer back
in the late nineteen thirties. He worked in an elevator company.
It had its ups and downs, but in his spare
time he was coming up with scientific hypotheses and inventing
theoretical devices, you know, little inventions like particle accelerators. So
while his idea sounded wild, Arbo was willing to give
(03:01):
it a shot because he had shown that he had
a keen understanding of nuclear physics from a self taught perspective,
which seemed pretty remarkable. The test would be called Operation Argus.
The US chose a spot in the South Atlantic Ocean,
essentially between the tip of Africa and the tip of
(03:21):
South America. It was about as remote from human civilization
as you could get without being in the Antarctic. And
this was an enormous endeavor. It wasn't like one launch pad.
We're talking four thousand five military personnel involved. On top
of that, you had scientists, you had engineers, were all
(03:42):
part of the test. The first test happened on August
nineteen fifty eight. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, on that
same day, Ernest Lawrence, one of the strongest advocates for
nuclear weapons development and testing, passed away. Ernest Lawrence and
Edward Teller had been the gung ho proponents of building
(04:05):
out a nuclear arsenal, including the hydrogen bomb and and
bigger weapons beyond that. He had at the time been
attending a conference dedicated to arriving at a global ban
on nuclear weapons testing. This was essentially by order of
the US government. President Eisenhower and Herb York, the scientific
director over at ARPA, had given him this assignment. It
(04:28):
was kind of ironic that they sent Lawrence there to
talk about a nuclear test band, considering his personal views
on the subject, and that may have contributed to stress,
which in turn may have contributed to his health deteriorating
and then ultimately his passing. The Argus tests, which consisted
of three separate nuclear weapons fired in into the atmosphere
(04:50):
on three different occasions from late August into early September,
were considered a failure. The explosions did not produce the
effects Christophilos had did. The explosions did create high energy electrons,
and they did exist a bit longer in the magnetosphere
than they might have otherwise, but not at the intensity
(05:11):
and duration that Christophilos had anticipated, not enough to be
a force field protector against incoming I C b ms,
So this defense was not going to pan out. There
was some talk that perhaps the engineers and scientists could
figure out a way to make it work if they
had more time to test, but with the approaching ban
on nuclear testing coming, that would make the matter moot.
(05:33):
The ban on nuclear testing would begin on October thirty one,
ninety eight. Edward Teller, the proponent of nuclear tests and
friend to Ernest Lawrence, suggested that the United States keep
testing anyway, but if they were to keep those tests
to less than a kill a ton of force, they
could probably do it and remain undetectable by all the
different powers in the world that were interested in monitoring
(05:56):
such stuff. So he essentially said, if you want to
do testing on the QT, just keep those explosions below
one kill a ton of force. You can keep on
changing up your designs and approaches to nuclear weaponry as
long as we don't make the boom too big, and
then no one will ever be the wiser, and essentially
Teller said, whether we choose to do this or not,
(06:17):
you can bet the Soviets are going to be doing it.
Tell her was very much of that kind of opinion
of the Soviet Union for all of his life. Now,
when I left off in the last episode, I was
talking about the Corona Project, the aforementioned spy satellites that
had a public cover name called Discoverer. The nature of
the Corona project would remain classified until ninet so for
(06:40):
decades the American public was kept ignorant of what Discoverer
satellites were actually doing up in space, which was taking
photos mostly of the Soviet Union. By the time the
Corona Project was a success, DARPA had a new director.
The original director, Roy W. Johnson, resigned in nineteen fifty
nine after much of our was work in the missile
(07:01):
program got undermined and handed back over to the various
Armed services branches. The morale at ARPA was shaken as
a result. People working in ARPA had the goal of
advancing technology and military applications, and they were starting to
feel like their work was being tossed aside or dismissed. Now,
originally Johnson's replacement was going to be a guy named
(07:21):
Charles Critchfield. Critchfield was a nuclear physicist who had worked
on the Manhattan Project. In nine he was working for
Convey in their General Dynamics department and he received the
request to come be the director of ARPA. But he
had a really good paying gig over at Convey. So
originally he was saying, I'll do it as long as
(07:42):
I can keep my position at Convey, and then I'll
just recuse myself from any project that Convey might be
part of to avoid the appearance of favoritism. But the
press pushed against that notion, asking how would he be
able to stay objective considering what looked like a really
serious conflict of intra So he withdrew himself from consideration.
(08:03):
Herbert York was given the task to find someone else,
and so he looked at the office of the Secretary
of Defense, and there he found General Austin Betts, who
was the deputy to the Director of Guided Missiles. York
also warned Bets that ARPA was the target of opposition
from pretty much every branch of the military. Bets understood,
(08:23):
and he went about doing his best to mollify the
concerns and the objections of military brass while letting the
administrators at ARPA continue their work as best he could.
Bets gets a lot of credit for stabilizing ARPA in
the wake of Johnson's departure. He also worked with the
branches of the Armed forces to recognize ARPA's place in
the overall strategy for the United States. According to Bets,
(08:46):
military officials would look at ARPA with some level of
resentment because they believe that the money that was going
to ARPA could have been better spent in those respective
military branches. Essentially, they're taking our money. Bets did his
best to convince them that ARPA's R and D focus
would be a benefit to the branches in the long run,
and it was not intended to be a competing agency.
(09:08):
I'll have more to say about DARPA's early days in
just a moment, but first let's take a quick break
to thank our sponsor. In nineteen sixty, ARPA announced the
launch of an interdisciplinary Laboratory or IDEL program. The purpose
(09:30):
of this program was to advance materials science, which is
the study of the properties of matter and potential applications,
which again largely had to do with defense. The agency
awarded three contracts that year, each contract lasting four years,
and they all had renewable clauses attached to them. The
three universities that won those first contracts were the University
(09:51):
of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, and Northwestern University. The IDEL program
would continue for twelve years. It would include more universities
over time, and then ARPA would transfer it to the
National Science Foundation, which subsequently changed the program's name to
the Materials Research Laboratories Program. That program would fund exploratory
(10:11):
research in all sorts of materials, some of which would
end up playing an important role in making better tools
and equipment for the military. Also in nineteen sixty, ARPA
launched a navigation satellite, the first and what would eventually
become a global navigation system. It was called Transit. The
project grew out of R and D work from the
Johns Hopkins Universities Applied Physics Laboratory. The satellite had an
(10:36):
accuracy down to tens of meters, which helped boost map
accuracy considerably. Are BA administered the project until the mid
nineteen sixties, when it would transfer that system to the
United States Navy Transit would ultimately consist of thirty six
satellites in orbit and would serve as the primary US
satellite based navigation system until nine, when it would be
(11:00):
replaced by the Global Positioning System or GPS. Over the
first two years of ARPA's existence, the budget for its
Defender program, also known as the Ballistics Missile Defense or
BMD project, was about nine hundred million dollars from R
and D to operations, so just under a billion dollars,
an enormous amount of money now and back in nineteen
(11:25):
fifty nine. Nineteen sixty would be a really big year
of changes for DARPA, or again ARPA at the time.
Herbert York, who was the first chief Scientist then he
became Director of Defense Research and Engineering, would step down.
John F. Kennedy became President of the United States, and
as a result, as is frequently the case with administration changes,
(11:47):
you started to see a house cleaning process where people
who had been uh inhabiting certain positions and various agencies
are removed and new people are put in place. But
for a short time, York was essentially the acting Secretary
of Defense until Kennedy's pick, a guy named McNamara would
(12:08):
make his way through confirmation hearings, so for a short while,
Herbert York was effectively in charge of the codes for
nuclear weapons in the United States, like all of them.
This was before the country had established the protocols around
the so called nuclear football, so he was the head
man in charge of the nuclear weapons arsenal at that
(12:29):
point for a few months or a few days really.
Kennedy was concerned about Communist insurgents in Southeast Asia, particularly
in Vietnam, so in response, he began to task officials
with coming up with counter insurgency strategies. ARPA would play
a big role in that, particularly starting in nineteen sixty one.
(12:49):
I'll get back to that in a second, but first,
in nineteen sixty one, after spending just a little more
than a year as the director of ARPA, General Betts resigned.
His placement was a guy named Dr Jack p. Runa,
an electrical engineer who was a professor in my t now.
Runa was the first scientist to head up our PA
(13:10):
from a director level. He would step down in nineteene,
but in a short time as director he would oversee
many important projects and developments, including the founding of the
Information Processing Techniques Office or I p t O. More
on that in our next episode. As part of Project Defender,
ARPA would reach out to another young organization called Jason.
(13:33):
Jason was a for profit scientific research group largely dedicated
to tackling problems related to defense and military applications. Is
named after the Greek hero Jason, and it was a secretive,
exclusive group of some of the most talented scientists in
the United States. Super duper hush hush, though, and these
(13:54):
scientists would get top level security clearance to various programs.
Through Out its run, ARPA would ask Jason to pitch
ideas that would improve the Defender missile defense program. One
such proposal they came up with was to equip every
US warhead with decoys to confound the Soviet Union's anti
(14:15):
ballistic missile defense system. So in this case, there wasn't
so much as defending against incoming missiles as to make
our outgoing missiles more effective. Essentially, every warhead would deploy
a decoy or more than one up to five to
improve its chances of making it through the defenses of
the USSR to detonate at its intended target. The strategy
(14:36):
became known as Penetration AIDS or pen AIDS for short.
This would later grow into another project called pen X,
in which scientists work on creating multiple independently targeted reentry
vehicles also known as merv's m I r vs. The
Jason Group was being funded by ARPA, but it was
so secretive and its work was so important to US
(14:59):
defense that the scientists were able to put tough restrictions
on ARPA's involvement with their work, like crazy restrictions. They
demanded that they would be allowed to to work on
their own solving whatever problems were assigned to them without
outside interference. And the only person from ARPA who was
(15:20):
allowed to attend their summer sessions. And this was a
concession they made uh most of the members of JASON,
by the way, we're teaching throughout most of the year,
the summer was when they would have time off, and
so they would dedicate that to working on these problems.
The only person from ARPA who could go to this
summer session was the director himself, Jack Runo. No one
else from MARPA would be allowed to hang out with
(15:42):
the scientists, and eventually RUNA agreed to this because they
needed these guys. The Jason scientists also worked on on
a super top secret project on directed energy beam weapons.
So one of the important members of the Jason group
was a guy named Charles Towns. Charles Towns built the
(16:02):
first maser that's the microwave based precursor of the laser,
so the team wanted to explore the possibility of using
directed energy beams to send blasts at, say, an incoming missile,
in order to disarm it. There have been numerous directed
energy beam product projects at DARPA. Most of those remain classified,
(16:23):
so we can only guess as to how far along
they have come, although a lot of people will say
that the technology being worked on at various projects that
are funded by DARPA tends to be up to ten
years ahead of the stuff you would see out in
the quote unquote real world, so that's something to think about. Meanwhile,
in Hawaii, ARPA began a project called the ARPA mid
(16:45):
Course Optical Station or AMOS A m o S in
nineteen sixty one. This was an observatory that was meant
to detect, image, and take measurements of space objects like satellites, payloads,
and other stuff like miss re entering the Airth's atmosphere.
The facility is on top of a mountain in Maui, Hawaii.
It would take years to build this facility and the
(17:08):
instruments needed to carry out the task, but it all
started in nineteen sixty one. In nineteen sixty nine it
was an established facility. It entered into its second phase
of operation, in which would measure re entry bodies as
part of the Advanced Ballistic re Entry System project. And
in nineteen four DARPA. At that point the agency's name
had changed kind of and it had changed back. In
(17:30):
nineteen seventy two they would change back to ARPA and
then back to DARPA again. We'll get there anyway. In
ninety four, DARPA transferred the facility over to the US
Air Force to become part of the Air Force Space
Tracking System. In ninety three, AMOS got a name change,
at least the acronym has now changed. Now it stands
for Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site. So remember
(17:52):
when I talked about the counterinsurgency efforts that Kennedy was
interested in. Well, in nineteen sixty one that took shape
as a huge initiative, probably the third biggest project DARPA
was tackling behind Defender and Vila Villa being the project
to to be able to detect nuclear weapons detonations. This
(18:13):
project was called Agile and it was a joint effort
between ARPA. There was a group of advisors called the
Military Assistance Advisory Group or m a a G, and
South Vietnam officials like the President of South Vietnam. The
project would have to deal with an entirely different approach
than the counterballistics work that ARPA had been involved with.
(18:36):
This was a major switching of gears from missile warfare
to how to get a technological advantage over enemy forces
that were at home fighting in say, jungle environments. One
of the champions project Agile was a guy named William Godal,
and intelligence operative who worked with ARPA and who acted
as sort of a liaison between various intelligence agencies and ARPA.
(19:00):
While many of the scientists at ARPA came from a
perspective of advancing the US capabilities in nuclear warfare, Godal
was looking at things from a different point of view.
He was interested in psychological warfare and the alleged brainwashing
techniques used by communists in the fifties and early sixties,
and he advocated for the creation of an ARPA branch
in Southeast Asia. Kennedy agreed, and the agency established the
(19:24):
ARPA Combat Development and Test Center. More on what they
did in just a moment, but first another quick break
to thank our sponsor. Godal wanted to develop techniques to
teach the South Vietnamese military how to combat insurgents, preferably
(19:46):
in a way that would not require the United States
to get directly involved, and in that way, the United
States could push back against the spread of Communism without
being on the ground in a war. So the thought
was that Project Agile would develop not just technology, but
best practices for the South Vietnamese military to use to
(20:06):
fight off the Viet Cong and the spread of communism.
It was the most active ARPA would get in actual
military operations. One of the many developments under Project Agile,
which covered tons of different subprojects UH, and one of
the most tragic. In fact, I would argue is probably
the most tragic of the projects that Agile was focused on,
(20:31):
was the development of the so called rainbow agents. These
were chemical agents and they were meant to kill off vegetation. UH.
They were herbicides. They were designed to remove jungle cover
and also to take away any advantage insurgents might have
while engaging in guerrilla warfare and to affect food supply.
Although Godal was largely looking at this as a way
(20:54):
of taking away the jungle cover to remove that advantage
that the viet Cong held. The most famous of these
rainbow agents was, of course, agent Orange. Now agent orange
is a mixture of two major herbicides, and it also
happens to be incredibly toxic to human beings. The President
of Vietnam, President d M, wanted to use herbicide in
(21:18):
large regions which would affect both insurgents and innocent Vietnamese citizens.
They are beside would affect jungles and food crops, including
food crops just grown by innocent people, not people who
were feeding the viet Cong. D M's goal was to
make the viet Cong, those those communists insurgents, dependent upon
the South Vietnamese government for food and that would force
(21:40):
them to obey him. So he took this tool that
ARPA had created, this herbicide, and he put to use
in a wide area, affecting thousands of people. Agent orange
can damage genes and it can lead to birth defects
and offspring. It can lead to higher instances of cancer
to people have been exposed to it. It's one of
(22:01):
the most terrible weapons created by the United States and
actually put to use in warfare. I also think it's
an example of some of the mental gymnastics that William
Goldal was able to go through to justify the existence
of this program. To begin with, the Geneva Convention expressly forbids,
chemical and biological weapons, and if you use them, you're
(22:25):
going to be the target of the international communities scorn
and worse, and the United States did not want to
to court that scorn. But destroying an enemy's food supply
is not against the Geneva Convention. You can do that
and it's quote unquote fair. The rules of what is
and isn't fair and warfare still kind of perplex me.
(22:49):
It's a weird thing to think about that something that
is terrible to people in one way is not against
the rules, and something that's terrible to people in a
different way is against the rules. Blows my mind anyway.
Framing this project as targeting not the people but their
food and the jungle itself wasn't against the Geneva Convention,
(23:10):
at least not on the surface. However, since the chemicals
were distributed by plane or helicopter, which meant they were
sprayed over large, often populated areas, I think it's kind
of hard to say we were just aiming for the
jungle and the food. We didn't mean to get the
people to Despite all that, President Kennedy approved the use
of the Arab side, though admittedly he did cut the
(23:31):
scope of the proposed use by a significant amount. Even so,
by the end of the Vietnam War, about nineteen million
gallons of the stuff had been unleashed in Vietnam. The
estimates on the number of Vietnamese directly exposed to the
chemicals range from two point one million people on the
conservative side up to four point eight million people. It's
(23:53):
truly horrifying stuff. Now. The documentation for Project Agile outlines
eight sub project areas. There's tactical unit weapons systems, area
fire weapons systems, remote area mobility and logistics systems, communication systems,
combat surveillance and target acquisition systems, individual and special projects,
(24:16):
technical planning and programming, and finally, research and exploratory development.
The work in Project Agile would lead to stuff like
flame throwers, and then the adoption of the M sixteen
as the infantry weapon of choice for US soldiers. The
M sixteen was based off the cult A R fifteen,
(24:36):
a style of rifle that today has a pretty horrific
reputation in various shooting incidents. The A R fifteen fires
five five six ammunition five point five six millimeter ammunition.
During Project Agile, the US military mostly was using the
I fourteen rifle for its soldiers, uh the M fourteen
(24:56):
fires a heavy seven point six two millimeter ammunition seven
six to The prevailing wisdom was that the five six
mma would not pack the punch needed in US military operations.
Part of the Project Agile had ARPA scientists heading up
projects to improve and test A R fifteen's to change
them into a new type of light assault rifle so
(25:19):
that the lighter weapon could replace this heavier M fourteen
and it would be more useful to Vietnamese soldiers, who
the group viewed as being smaller than American soldiers and
therefore they would need lighter weapons. I'm not going to
comment on that other than to say that that was
there conclusion anyway that led to the M sixteen, which
(25:42):
until fairly recently was the primary weapon of the U
S military. It's since been largely replaced by the M
four carbine, which is another five five six m O gun. Now,
I'm going to spare you guys the language that's in
the reports on the performance of the A R fifteen's
that ARPA had issued to US Special Forces for lie
field tests, meaning that soldiers were tearing this into actual
(26:04):
combat scenarios. Suffice it to say that the weapons were
found to be very effective, and the language makes that clear,
and how deadly the weapons were in actual combat situations.
It's really disturbing stuff. Actually, how casually these reports refer
to the lethality of the weapons. It's very matter of fact,
which I get, I suppose from a you know, observing
(26:27):
and evaluing the performance of a tool. But when you
realize that the execution of that tool is the literal
end of someone's life, it's pretty sobering stuff. Other parts
of Project Agile seemed fairly bizarre. For example, there was
a canine program that was part of Project Agile. In
this program, are But proposed developing a chemical scent that
(26:51):
dogs could detect but humans could not. And the idea
was that Viennamese soldiers could quietly and secretly mark large
groups of people with a chemical or maybe even have
an aircraft pass overhead and spray it out. The chemical
would be harmless, but it would be detectable by these canines,
and then Vietnamese soldiers could use dogs to track people
(27:12):
who turned up in suspicious places. As a result, AREPA
tested a chemical they called Squalingens, was made from shark
and fish liver oil. Uh The tests proved promising when
they were conducted over at Fort Benning, Georgia, not too
far from where I am. But then they took it
over to Vietnam and discovered that the dogs would not
be able to follow the scent for very long in
(27:33):
the hotter, more humid environments. Are But also developed a
quiet power glider meant to fly just over the jungle
canopy silently or near silently over in Vietnam. Rather, of course,
are But did not developed this itself. It funded the
development of this. They first reached out to the Navy
(27:54):
and got two unpowered SGS two thirty two gliders. Those
were made by a being called the Schweitzer Aircraft Corporation.
AREPA then handed those over to the company Lockeed, which
used its skunk Works Special Projects division. Skunk Works is
where all the super top secret work at Lockheed happens,
and Lockheed would install Volkswagen air cooled engines in the
(28:17):
gliders that would connect to the propellers. The aircraft ran
pretty quietly, though not as quietly as the Army would like.
They eventually would send the gliders back to Lockheed to
make some changes. Now. At one point there was talk
of experimenting with radar absorbing paint to reduce the radar
signature of these gliders, but the team ultimately decided that
that was beyond the scope of their project. The gliders
(28:40):
were in limited use during Vietnam, but more importantly, they
led to the development of other spy plane technology, stealth technology,
and unmanned drones. Project Agile also included calls for new
types of shotguns, new rifle grenades, uh sound cannons, cannons
that would actually use sound waves as a shock deliverer,
(29:04):
and bombs that could detonate between the top of a
jungle canopy and the ground below. And besides weapons, the
agency was funding research and stuff like anti venom kits
in the event of a snake bite. Uh. They were
creating leach repellent, you know, glamorous stuff. They're also funding
projects that would retrofit existing vehicles so that they could
(29:25):
move more effectively through the jungle environments. And they began
to work to develop more advanced communication systems to help
with logistics. And it was a huge undertaking and this
would fuel research for several years and result in many
more changes in US military operations, not all of them
good ones. Project Agile would continue until nineteen seventy four,
(29:45):
when ARPO would officially conclude it. Actually at that point
they were called DARPA. Between its launch and its end,
ARPO would officially kick off the Information Processing Techniques Office
and put J. C. R. Licklider in charge of it.
Liquilide Or would begin several projects that would have an
enormous impact, not just on the United States but the
(30:06):
entire world. That would include the first steps towards the
establishment of the Internet. Now I'll talk about that more
in the next episode. For now, let's conclude this second
part of our story about DARPA. We will continue our
look in our next episode exploring some of the more
bizarre things that DARP has been involved with, as well
(30:29):
as the the baby steps that would lead to the Internet.
And keep in mind every single thing I've talked about,
every project I've talked about, I could do a full
episode or maybe a couple of episodes to really cover
because there are tons of implications there, things that would
spin off and become technological advancements in other areas. And
(30:52):
it's all fascinating stuff sometimes terrifying as well. But if
you have any requests, maybe there's something you heard in
this episode, or maybe there's some other tech topic you
would like me to cover, go on and visit tech
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.