---
aliases:
- ARPA
category: U.S. Government
created: 2025-07-22
description: The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was a U.S. government agency
  responsible for funding and overseeing advanced technological research, including
  early investigations into psychic phenomena. It is now known as DARPA.
end: 1972
location: Arlington, Virginia
start: 1958
summary: The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), now known as DARPA, was a U.S.
  government agency that funded advanced technological research including early classified
  investigations into psychic phenomena during the Cold War.
tags:
- organization
- government
- research
title: Advanced Research Projects Agency
updated: 2026-06-12
---

The [Advanced Research Projects Agency](/organizations/advanced-research-projects-agency/) (ARPA) was a U.S. government agency responsible for funding and overseeing advanced technological research. It is now known as [DARPA](/organizations/darpa/) (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).[^1]

In the early 1970s, ARPA showed interest in psychic phenomena, sending a three-man team to observe [Uri Geller](/people/uri-geller/) at [Stanford Research Institute](/organizations/stanford-research-institute/) (SRI) in early 1973.[^1]

While ARPA's corporate stance was not to pursue further investigations into Geller, one of its team members, psychologist [Robert Van de Castle](/people/robert-van-de-castle/), was reportedly impressed by Geller's abilities.[^1]

### Long-Horizon Research and Military Psychology

ARPA was specifically designed to sponsor projects whose results would not arrive for ten to fifteen years, providing a funding mechanism for long-horizon military science outside standard procurement budgets. Its Arlington, Virginia headquarters sat in the same building complex as the [Army Research Institute](/organizations/usaribss/) and other military psychological research organizations. In the psychological sciences its Cold War work concentrated on biofeedback research and early brain-weapon studies (including whether pilots' brain states could be linked to missile systems), and on the psychology of insurgent organizations, with Vietnam as the primary focus. The most prominent ARPA-commissioned psychological study was the [Rand Corporation](/organizations/rand-corporation/)'s Viet Cong motivation and morale study of the early 1960s, and ARPA also sponsored [Project Agile](/programs/project-agile/), a series of Asian military-science studies that included the Battelle Memorial Institute smell-weapons research of 1966. A 1964 classified memorandum from the Director of Defense Research and Engineering placed ARPA in an integrating role for behavioral and social science research across the service branches.[^2]

---

[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^2]: Peter Watson, *War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology*. Basic Books, 1978.