DARPA will fund offensive cyber capability R&D

March 4, 2012 — 10:25pm ET | By David Perera

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will increasingly fund research on offensive cyber capabilities, a top DARPA official told a Feb. 29 House panel.

Cyber research has consumed an increasingly large portion of DARPA funding to the point where in fiscal 2013 the agency proposes to spend $246 million on it, said Ken Gabriel, DARPA deputy director. He testified before the House Armed Services subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities.

"Modern warfare demands the effective use of cyber and kinetic means. That requires DoD cyber capabilities matched to our kinetic options," Gabriel said.

A provision of the fiscal 2012 national defense authorization act says the military may conduct offensive cyberspace operations subject to the same principles the Defense Department uses for kinetic operations, including the law of armed conflict, and the War Powers Resolution.

Over the next 5 years, DARPA envisions that cyber research will grow from 8 percent of its project funding to 12 percent. The agency is funding less research on energy and autonomous systems, Gabriel said, adding that manufacturing is also a new area of emphasis.

DARPA also increasingly funds data-utilization projects such as algorithms for big data manipulation, he said. Where once its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance portfolio was weighted to sensor research by 70 percent of the total, sensors and data exploitation are now about evenly balanced, Gabriel said.

Cyber spending across the entire Defense Department amounts to $3.4 billion, said Zachary Lemnios, assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering, who also testified at the hearing. In the current fiscal year, the Pentagon has funded an effort to build a common operating picture of its networks' status, he said.

In addition, the department is standing up a Cyber Integration Management Board to coordinate cyber initiatives across DoD agencies and the military services, Lemnios added.

For more:
- go to the hearing webpage (prepared testimonies and webcast available)

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