Upgrading obsolete software is a digital chore we are all familiar with. If we’re not running updates to our phone or computer OS, we’re lamenting the fact that our once modern machine now feels like it was built in the stone age, and the software installed on it feels archaic enough to be in a museum.

But it’s not a problem we tend to think of as solvable. Our visions of the future include all sorts of fixes to everyday issues, but if we ever gave it much thought we’d probably concede software upgrades are likely to be an issue for a long time to come.

However if DARPA, the US military’s research arm, has anything to do with it, the age of software upgrades could soon be over.

The organisation has announced that it is to start developing software that can remain “robust and functional in excess of 100 years”; something it believes will save the military considerable time and money.

At the heart of the issue is the way that applications are currently executed by computers, through a software stack where each layer takes on different functions and interacts with the computer at a different level.

Accessing these individual layers can be a pain, often coming with vague or informal documentation that makes getting a true picture of the software as a whole a trying experience. As a result, software cannot adapt to a changing digital environment and so has to be updated manually.

“Technology inevitably evolves, but very often corresponding changes in libraries, data formats, protocols, input characteristics and models of components in a software ecosystem undermine the behaviour of applications,” explained Suresh Jagannathan, manager of DARPA’s Building Resource Adaptive Software Systems (BRASS) program, which is developing the century-long software.

“The inability to seamlessly adapt to new operating conditions undermines productivity, hampers the development of cyber-secure infrastructure and raises the long-term risk that access to important digital content will be lost as the software that generates and interprets content becomes outdated.”

DARPA is planning to solve this by starting afresh with the design of software.

It plans to create applications that can monitor their own interactions with the computers they are installed on, keeping a carefully eye on the relationship between the computations being performed and the amount of resources being used, and adapting accordingly.

The result, if successful, should be software that can adapt to changing environments and thus protects against security vulnerabilities that typically emerge as software ages. This would remove the primary need for upgrades, and thus make century-old software a viable possibility.

With the digital domain becoming an increasing location for warfare, maintaining robust security is paramount, and software that becomes quickly obsolete makes that difficult to achieve.

“Ensuring applications continue to function correctly and efficiently in the face of a changing operational environment is a formidable challenge,” explained Jagannathan.

“Failure to respond to these changes can result in technically inferior and potentially vulnerable systems. Equally concerning, the lack of automated upgrade mechanisms to restructure and transform applications leads to high software maintenance costs and premature obsolescence of otherwise functionally sound software.”