The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) recommends reducing the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) fiscal year 2014 budget request by $100 million, or 3.5 percent.
The committee in its FY ’14 defense authorization report cites the current fiscal environment of budget tightening across the federal government, “some lingering questions” about DARPA’s ability to fully execute all its funding in a timely fashion and concerns over certain programs as the basis for the proposed reduction. President Barack Obama’s FY ’14 budget request asked for $2.87 billion for DARPA (Defense Daily, April 26).
SASC was specifically critical of part of DARPA’s effort to d
evelop a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) X-Plane technology to replace large, open-rotor helicopters. The committee said while it noted that DARPA has identified challenging speed goals that are significant improvements over rotorcraft performance today, it believes that the target size of a vehicle in the 10,000 pound to 12,000 pound class is too small to be of useful military utility. SASC also said it urges DARPA to anticipate more than a single performer to be selected for flight tests.
DARPA said in a February broad agency announcement (BAA) it seeks new VTOL technologies because the current inventory of vertical flight machines, dominated by the large, open rotor helicopters, is inadequate for flight at high speeds covering long ranges and hovering under extreme conditions. Though engineers have improved the speed of fixed-wing aircraft over the years, attempts to increase efficient VTOL speed have stalled (Defense Daily, April 2).
Though it was critical of X-Plane’s development, SASC recommended terminating DARPA’s Transformer (TX) program to increase funding for X-Plane. SASC questioned the military utility of Transformer, in which DARPA seeks to combine the advantages of ground vehicles and helicopters into a single vehicle.
SASC also recommended increasing funding for DARPA’s Plan-X cyber warfare program by $5 million. The committee expressed “deep concern” for how Plan-X was given a disproportionate reduction due to sequestration in FY ’13 and that, given the potential for significant contributions by Plan-X to the Defense Department’s greater cyber efforts, it deserved a boost.
DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar said in April Plan-X, formally known as Foundational Cyberwarfare, is specifically about making the offensive aspect of cyber warfare more manageable and controllable . Prabhakar had said Plan-X was being delayed due to sequestration (Defense Daily, April 26).