United States Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center

The United States Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), headquartered at the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, is the US Army's primary research and development arm for armament and munitions systems. Besides Picatinny, ARDEC has four other research facilities, including Benét Laboratories. It is heavily involved in the development of the Future Combat Systems program and also works to develop more advanced weapons using technologies such as microwaves, lasers and nano-technology.

ARDEC is the R&D center for armaments used by the U.S. Army, Special Operations Command, and other organizations. It is one of the specialized research, development, and engineering centers within the U.S. Army Materiel Command. ARDEC’s purpose is to provide battlefield supremacy for U.S. troops through “overmatch capabilities.” Over the past 10 years, ARDEC has developed and released more than 20 products that have provided U.S. troops with “world’s best” capabilities, compared with products from foreign military and other U.S. defense organizations.

Mission
ARDEC's mission is to develop and maintain a world-class workforce to execute and manage integrated life cycle engineering processes required for the research, development, production, field support and demilitarization of munitions, weapons, fire control and associated items. .

ARDEC is broken into a number of directorates such as "Weapons Systems and Technology Directorate" and "Munitions Systems and Technology Directorate".

Highlights
Efforts to diversify ARDEC’s revenue stream have led to a growth in non-Army revenue from about $60 million in FY 2001 to $140 million in FY07. Overall revenue has increased from approximately $600 million in FY 2001 to around $1.2 billion in FY 2007.

Designated as the benchmark for the Army in technology transfer, ARDEC has had since FY 2005 approximately 75 percent of its technology projects transition from research into customer funded development.

ARDEC has received awards and recognition based on customer satisfaction and perceived value including Value Engineering Accomplishments of Merit. Over the past five years, ARDEC has won 13 of the Army’s “10 Greatest Inventions of the Year” awards. Additionally, ARDEC has won the “Army Research and Development Lab of the Year” award for two of the last four years.

ARDEC’s SWORDS robot was named one of the “most amazing inventions of 2004” by TIME magazine.