OK, but that seems like a funny definition of "military presence", since DARPA is the military.

The goal DARPA was trying to accelerate by funding self-driving, btw, was to "achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that ... by 2015, one third of the operational ground combat vehicles are unmanned". [0]

[0] https://www.grandchallenge.org/grandchallenge/docs/Grand_Cha...

It appears we e have different thresholds on what counts as "military presence".

By way of explanation: rocketry was funded and developed for military ends, including von Braun's earlier work on the V2 and later work on missiles across the Atlantic and the development of ICBMs. IMO, there's no military presence in human spaceflight[1], but you may see it differently due to the heritage of the propulsion system.