Wired.com: The Pentagon's storied research and development arm turned 50 years old this year, and its birthday present appears to be another $100 million in budget cuts, according to a Defense Department document. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is having a tumultuous financial year: in June, DARPA faced a $32 million cut because it was "underexecuting", leading the agency's director, Tony Tether, to strike back by saying the Pentagon's "comptroller apparently does not believe in accountability."

Cognitive computing systems, which has previously been hit by congressional cuts, will lose another $13 million, while Network Centric Technology is sliced by $19 million. Another $18 million is being diced from biological warfare defense, and a big cut is taken out of DARPA's Electronics Technology program, which loses $26 million. The cuts also indicate that DARPA's high power fiber laser program has apparently been canceled.