DARPA Calls on Industry to Assist With Improving, Strengthening DoD Cybersecurity

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An Air Force MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft, assigned to the 432nd Wing, taxis toward the runway at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., April 15, 2025.
An Air Force MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft, assigned to the 432nd Wing, taxis toward the runway at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., April 15, 2025. The Air Force is retrofitting the Reaper with software as part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's capstone demonstration of formal methods application. Formal methods refer to techniques used to model aspects of complex systems or subsystems, where mathematical proofs are employed to demonstrate that a system will behave as intended. The application of formal methods contributes to the stability and resistance of a software system to hacking (credit: Air Force Senior Airman Renee Blundon).

August 5, 2025 | Originally published by U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) on June 18, 2025

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced a Resilient Software Systems Accelerator program to kick-start the widespread adoption of math-based software development practices to make military systems inherently more secure against cyberthreats.

During the Resilient Software Systems Colloquium held in Arlington, Virginia, leaders from the Defense Department, DARPA, and industry spoke about aging IT infrastructure, security standards, and software tools and techniques known as “formal methods,” that have been proven to significantly improve the resiliency, security, and functionality of military systems used within the defense community.

Director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office Kathleen Fisher described formal methods as “mathematically based approaches” that allow the user to prove properties about software to obtain guarantees, adding that DARPA has been involved in developing tools related to formal methods for over a decade.