DARPA project noted on News of the Weird. Real?

From News of the Weird

This made me :dubious: so, I went to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) web site. I didn’t find the project, but since it’s a very large, technical, and rather arcane site, I could easily have missed it. There was nothing titled “Human Cannonballs in Wartime.”

So, two questions. One, does anyone know if the above is real.
And second, how acurate is News of the Weird in general?

I want to be sure hubby finds a new career before his employer decides to shoot him across the rooftops.

Thanks.

Well, the new scientist article exists:

It links to a patent application:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1="20060086349".PGNR.&OS=DN/20060086349&RS=DN/20060086349

From a brief look at the patent, it appears to cover equipment and other items, not just humans.

Whether is being/will be used to launch people I don’t know, but it looks like the idea was considered.

“How accurate is News of the Weird?”

My very strong perception is, they leave out all the boring parts that makes you realize the event was not particularly surprising. They write up “accused of molesting sheep” and “found not guilty”, leaving out the part where evidence showed that no sheep were actually molested.