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 Aerial view in 2021 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Established | 1923 | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Research type | Basic and Applied Research | ||||||||||||||||||
| Budget | $1.1 billion[1] | ||||||||||||||||||
Field of research | |||||||||||||||||||
| Director | Dr. Bruce Danly | ||||||||||||||||||
| Staff | 2,538 civilian 86 military (2015) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Washington, D.C., United States 38°49′21″N 77°01′30″W / 38.82250°N 77.02500°W | ||||||||||||||||||
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The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. It was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, applied research, technological development and prototyping. The laboratory's specialties include plasma physics, space physics, materials science, and tactical electronic warfare. NRL is one of the first US government scientific R&D laboratories, having opened in 1923 at the instigation of Thomas Edison, and is currently under the Office of Naval Research.[2]
As of 2016, NRL was a Navy Working Capital Fund activity, which means it is not a line-item in the US Federal Budget. Instead of direct funding from Congress, all costs, including overhead, were recovered through sponsor-funded research projects. NRL's research expenditures were approximately $1 billion per year.[3]