Leonardo DRS

Leonardo DRS traces back to 1968, when Leonard Newman and David Gross founded it as Diagnostic/Retrieval Systems on Long Island. It grew for decades as an independent defense electronics supplier before Italy's Finmeccanica, now Leonardo S.p.A., bought it in 2008 to give itself a foothold in the US defense market that foreign-owned primes otherwise struggle to reach. In 2022, Leonardo DRS went public on Nasdaq through a merger with RADA Electronic Industries, an Israeli radar maker, while Leonardo S.p.A. kept roughly 80 percent ownership. That history left the company with three distinct businesses that now organize its work.

Advanced Sensing and Computing covers infrared and electro-optical sensors, ruggedized computing, and the kind of imaging payloads that go into targeting pods, submarine periscopes, and vehicle situational awareness systems, technology that traces back through DRS's decades of supplying the US Navy and Army. Integrated Mission Systems builds naval power and propulsion electronics, including the electric drive systems used on Navy surface combatants, along with ground vehicle integration work and platforms like the T-100 Integrated Training System and the M1000 heavy equipment transport trailer. The company's drone line, including the RQ-15 Neptune and the Sentry HP, also sits inside this segment, alongside tactical communications and command systems used by deployed forces. The newest piece, DRS RADA Technologies, came directly from the 2022 RADA merger and builds compact, software-defined AESA radars aimed at counter-UAS, short-range air defense, hostile fire detection, and perimeter surveillance.

That radar line has become a growth engine for the company as militaries scramble to field layered counter-drone defenses, and Leonardo DRS has paired it with directed energy partners, demonstrating a counter-UAS laser mounted on a Stryker combat vehicle alongside BlueHalo in a live-fire test that shot down drones in flight. That kind of pairing, radar detection feeding a hard-kill effector, is where the company is putting a lot of its recent development effort. Leonardo DRS still leans heavily on legacy programs too, supplying passive sonar systems like the AN/SQR-17 for submarine detection and providing power and thermal management electronics for armored vehicle upgrades including work tied to the Bradley fighting vehicle family and mobile short-range air defense systems. With its Arlington, Virginia headquarters and Nasdaq listing under the ticker DRS, the company occupies an unusual position in the industry, a foreign-owned defense electronics supplier that trades as a US public company and competes directly for the kind of sensitive Pentagon sensor and power system contracts that typically go to fully domestic primes.