Source : WordNet®

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
     n : the central research and development organization for the
         United States Department of Defense; responsible for
         developing new surveillance technologies since 9/11 [syn:
          {DARPA}]

Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
     
         (DARPA, ARPA) An agency of the US Department of Defense
        responsible for the development of new technology for use by
        the military.  DARPA was established in 1958 in response to
        the Soviet launching of Sputnik, with the mission of keeping
        the US's military technology ahead of its enemies.  DARPA is
        independent from other more conventional military R&D and
        reports directly to senior DoD management.  DARPA has around
        240 personnel (about 140 technical) directly managing a $2
        billion budget.  These figures are "on average" since DARPA
        focusses on short (two to four-year) projects run by small,
        purpose-built teams.
     
        ARPA was its original name, then it was renamed DARPA (for
        Defense) in 1972, then back to ARPA [When?], and then,
        incredibly, back to DARPA again on 1996-03-11!
     
        ARPA was responsible for funding development of {ARPANET}
        (which grew into the {Internet}), as well as the {Berkeley}
        version of {Unix} and {TCP/IP}.
     
        {Home (http://www.darpa.mil/)}.
     
        {History (http://www.foldoc.org/pub/darpa)}.
     
        (1999-07-17)