The 'Royal Signals and Radar Establishment' (RSRE) was a scientific research establishment within the
Ministry of Defence's
Defence Procurement Agency of the
United Kingdom, located primarily at
Malvern in
Worcestershire. It was formed in the
1970s in an amalgamation of earlier research establishments including the
Royal Radar Establishment (RRE). In
1979 it merged with the
Services Electronic Research Laboratory (SERL) formerly at
Baldock and the Services Research and Development Establishment (SRDE) formerly at Christchurch. There were out-stations at the ex-
RAF airfields at
Defford and
Pershore.
In
April 1991 RSRE amalgamated with other defence research establishments to form the
Defence Research Agency, which in
April 1995 amalgamated with more organisations to form the
Defence Evaluation and Research Agency.
In
June 2001 this became independent of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) with approximately two thirds being incorporated into a
commercial company,
QinetiQ, owned by the MoD and the remainder into the fully government owned laboratory,
DSTL. In
2003, the
Carlyle Group bought a private equity stake (~30%) in QinetiQ.
Some of the most important technologies developed from work at RSRE are
radar,
thermal imaging,
liquid crystal displays and
speech synthesis.
The RSRE motto was ''Ubique Sentio'' (
latin for ''I sense everywhere'').
External links
★
The history of the RSRE E H Putley article in 'Physics in Technology'.
★
Defence Procurement Agency
★
QinetiQ - the commercial successor of DERA and RSRE
★
DSTL - the MOD owned successor of DERA and RSRE