Based on our long-term role as technical direction agent for three primary system components—Aegis, Cooperative Engagement Capability, and Standard Missile-6—we created the capability for Aegis-based missiles to engage over-the-horizon threats.
We serve as a trusted agent to the intelligence community, providing systems engineering, architecture, and integration to strengthen our nation’s cyber defenses. We also develop novel approaches for forensic examination of cyberattacks to bolster security.
APL measures the system performance of our nation’s submarine-launched ballistic missile forces through the design and implementation of rigorous testing and evaluation exercises, which ensure the accuracy and reliability of these critical national defense systems.
We play a key role in ensuring the nation’s senior leaders can communicate securely wherever they are in the world. We develop technologies in partnership with industry to deliver new secure capabilities and ensure the reliability and security of existing secure communication architectures.
We develop and assess new capabilities for predicting the performance of complex hypersonic vehicle shapes, investigate low-cost infrared and radio frequency sensors, and develop high-fidelity models to study guidance, navigation, and control strategies. These technologies serve as cornerstones for emerging classes of hypersonic precision strike capabilities.
We combine technical expertise with deep domain and operational knowledge to analyze problems and develop solutions to the most complex national security, space, and health challenges. Our analyses inform senior decision makers across the government on complex current and future operations.
We lead a flagship Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded effort to develop an advanced prosthetic arm, applying our biomechanical, manufacturing, and signal processing expertise to create a thought-controlled artificial limb that duplicates the movements of the human arm and hand. The team includes scientists and engineers from thirty organizations. Discover more here.
We have designed and built more than 70 spacecraft and hundreds of specialized instruments that have explored every planet in our solar system, including New Horizons, which provided the first close look at Pluto in 2015 and conducted the farthest flyby in history, of the Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth, in 2019. Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, has flown closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft, revolutionizing our knowledge of solar activity.