DARPA Tech

The 8 percent funding cut brought about by sequestration is "not a death blow" for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but it has been "quite corrosive," according to DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon this afternoon, Prabhakar said her agency has done its best to prioritize what efforts to scale back as a result of the sequestration cuts. But as a decade of two wars comes to an end, now is "a particularly important time" for the agency "to step back" and look at where DARPA needs to go in the future.

Prabhakar said her agency foresees three trends in the near future: An extended period where the United States will face a wide variety of different threats; new technologies will continue to play a role -- both for the United States and its potential adversaries; and fiscal constraints could portend a "fundamental shift" in how the United States allocates its national security resources.

DARPA will be looking to make systems more adaptable and will seek "ideas that can invert the cost equation," where adversaries are forced to spend more money on technology than the United States does, according to Prabhakar.

DARPA this afternoon released a 2013 framework document on "Driving Technological Surprise."