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Region's Share of DARPA Funds Drops Since 2000 (Mass High Tech)
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by Catherine Williams
Despite a rise in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's national budget, New England has received a shrinking share over the past five years.
Even as DARPA's director has said publicly that the agency is hungry for more Yankee ingenuity, New England's purse from the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense dropped to 13 percent in 2005, when the region took in $330 million, from 15 percent in 2000, when its share was $273 million.
DARPA has invested $2 billion total in New England from 2000 to 2005, according to federal figures obtained by Mass High Tech.
Improved commercialization efforts and collaboration among industry, universities and military installations will bolster the region's defense technology base, according to Alan Macdonald, executive director of the Massachusetts Defense Technology Initiative.
"There are other regions making efforts to catch up and surpass us. We have to be aware and act accordingly," said Macdonald, head of the statewide trade group.
According to DARPA director Anthony Tether, companies must be able to bring technologies to market rapidly if they want to successfully rake in DARPA dollars. Over the past three to five years, commercialization of technologies onto the battlefield has been a heavy focus for the agency, DARPA officials and contractors said.
Companies also need to understand the agency's future needs, said Tether.
In other words, snatching DARPA funds is easier for companies whose innovations fall into 11 technology areas targeted by the agency -- which include language translation, networked sensors and mind-controlled prosthetics. DARPA has also issued two challenges: It wants to lower the production cost of titanium to $2.50 per pound (prices range from $8 per pound to over $20 per pound depending on quality, according to a 2004 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy), and it wants to accelerate the rate of vaccine production from 12 years to 12 weeks, Tether said.
Massachusetts companies claim the bulk of the region's DARPA purse. In 2005, for example, Massachusetts raked in $257 million of New England's $330 million total. No. 2 ranked New Hampshire claimed $41 million. Yet from 2000 to 2005, the Bay State's share of national DARPA funds dropped to 10 percent, from 12 percent.
An example of a successful DARPA courtship is Cambridge-based BBN Technologies Inc.
In 2004, two Massachusetts companies ranked among the top 10 DARPA contractors: BBN, which employs 600 people, ranked No. 10, and received $27 million. Raytheon Co., which employs 22,000 people, ranked No. 4 and received $44 million.
BBN owes 40 percent to 45 percent of its annual revenue to DARPA awards, according to Jim Webster, director of DARPA programs at BBN. Since Sept. 28, 2006, BBN reports it received $13 million in DARPA awards.
BBN is well positioned to win future DARPA contracts because it is promoting its expertise in language translation, said Webster. BBN has also proven itself to DARPA. BBN's system to detect the location of bullets being fired at a target, dubbed "Boomerang," is being used by soldiers in Iraq.
DARPA was founded in 1958 after the Oct. 4, 1957 launch and orbit of the Soviet satellite Sputnik. The goal of the agency is to keep U.S. military R&D ahead of competing nations.
More than 100 people, including Tether; U.S. Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Lowell; technology industry leaders; and university scientists, met last month at the University of Massachusetts Lowell for technology businesses to showcase products and services, and for university researchers to spotlight their expertise to DARPA officials.
For companies such as Chelmsford-based Triton Systems Inc., whose livelihoo
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