Mr. Van Vleet: Applied Signal Technology has a very distinguished pedigree. We're celebrating our 25th year in business and can trace our roots to the very beginning of the United States government's investment in signals intelligence and electronic warfare. During World War II, the Harvard Radio Research Laboratory (RRL) was created to develop solutions to counter the use of radar against the Allied Forces. A second national laboratory spun out of Harvard's RRL and was established at Stanford University. As World War II ended, the Applied Electronics Laboratory (AEL) at Stanford pursued a wide range of advanced technology to support the intelligence and reconnaissance needs of the United States during the Cold War. Many companies spun out of the Stanford lab as the genesis of the defense industry in Silicon Valley. This included the Western Development Labs (WDL), Electromagnetic Systems Lab (ESL), Sylvania, Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and Argo Systems. Our founders left Argo Systems to form Applied Signal in January of 1984. We are one of the few companies that has survived to this day and is focused on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) technology.
TWST: So your company had an idea of what you wanted to do and then found the technologies to accomplish it?
Mr. Van Vleet: That's correct. Our company's initial focus was in communications intelligence, or intercepting enemy communications to be able to gather information. New technologies in digital signal processing and computing were emerging that really could revolutionize the defense industry in the 1980s. Our company leveraged this new signal processing technology to create a competitive advantage to detect extremely weak signals in very noisy environments - the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack. Over the last 25 years, we've expanded on this early foundation to provide products, systems, and services to the defense and intelligence communities to allow them to discover, intercept, locate and analyze a variety of electronic signals and communications. Given the large size and exponential growth of some data sources with which our customers are working, our products address highly technical challenges that require cutting-edge capabilities.
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