It's worth viewing DARPA from their customer's perspective. What DARPA brings to the DoD in a crisis is a stable of highly competent engineers and scientists who want to push the envelope and are smart enough to not let a crisis go to waste. I'm on the demand side right now and it's been awesome to see all these crack folks swarm down on my requirements.
If you think the DoD is behind the power curve, um, well, I have seen things that don't officially exist show up, obviously already engineered, so fast you can calculate from the shipping label how long it took someone to get off the phone and get it onto a plane.
So, yes, there are absolutely the long game 5-year efforts (which are often really sprouts of 20 or 30 year efforts). But it's a bit like YC: the alumni network is amazing.
If you think the DoD is behind the power curve, um, well, I have seen things that don't officially exist show up, obviously already engineered, so fast you can calculate from the shipping label how long it took someone to get off the phone and get it onto a plane.
So, yes, there are absolutely the long game 5-year efforts (which are often really sprouts of 20 or 30 year efforts). But it's a bit like YC: the alumni network is amazing.