Fighting talk: DARPA director Dr Anthony Tether told The Engineer how the agency is transforming the US military into a technological world beater--that may include robot soldiers

Engineer, The, September, 2003 by Rob Coppinger

NEXT MARCH Disneyland in California will play host to a group of engineers, businessmen and US government officials. The conference will appear unremarkable, scarcely attracting a second glance from tourists visiting the amusement park. But the subjects under discussion will be far from ordinary and in many ways more fantastic than anything Disney could conjure up.

For these are the men and women who work for arguably the most influential research organisation in the world, DARPA--the US government's department of defence's Defence Advanced Research Project Agency, and the technology think-tank behind America's military supremacy.

Even DARPA's critics do not deny its power and influence, which stretches across the globe. Outside the US its presence is...