Pioneering What’s Next

About Us

Defending the United States and supporting its interests worldwide is a relentless task, for which the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and U.S. intelligence agencies continually seek new, disruptive defense, aerospace, power, and security technologies. They need technologies that detect, secure against, and respond to threats of every kind, even as they provide options for proactive, offensive measures across a multitude of platforms and scenarios.

As the advanced technology R&D group inside our Electronic Systems sector, BAE Systems' FAST Labs™ team invents, innovates, adapts, and produces highly-advanced science, electronics, and engineering breakthroughs to provide those technologies. And FAST Labs is well known for its ability to clarify processes, focus resources, and overcome impediments to get those solutions into our customers' hands more quickly and cleanly than most imagine possible.

In addition to our internal resources, FAST Labs also collaborates with business areas throughout BAE Systems and partners with universities, venture capital firms, and start-ups via our External Tech Scouting unit. FAST Labs even works with competitors if it means identifying, integrating, and delivering the game-changing technologies our clients need at a higher velocity.

Always Innovating

FAST Labs' history of R&D innovation for U.S. DoD groups includes the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), and Office of Naval Research (ONR), as well as classified customers. That's a history built on our own advances and the many R&D teams who have joined BAE Systems over the years, from FADEC Alliance, Fairchild Imaging, Advanced Information Technology, ALPHATECH, Loral Space Systems, and Sanders Associates to Short Brothers Aeroplane Works, Tracor, Lear Astronics, Advanced Power Technologies, Boeing Commercial Electronics, Singer, and STI.

Defense Electronics R&D: Next Generation Systems

Our FAST Labs™ Defense Electronics R&D Unit creates advanced components for next generation EW systems and RF and EO/IR sensors, to disrupt adversary platforms and networks using the full electromagnetic spectrum.

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