DARPA Officially Opens New Facility in Ballston
Local, state and federal officials say they worked for years to keep the agency that gave the world the Internet in Arlington.
The government agency that gave birth to the Internet, unmanned drones and stealth technology officially settled in to its new location Tuesday at 675 N. Randolph St., just east of Ballston Common Mall. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is essentially the brain of the Department of Defense. It had been located near Arlington Central Library, but area representatives have worried it would leave Arlington — a community already coming to grips with the loss of an estimated 20,000 jobs as part of the Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, process. “Every community in the country wanted DARPA,” U.S. Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., told Patch. “…It was politics and policy that enabled us to keep it here.” Arlington did more than …
