Investing in North Carolina’s Defense Industrial Base. Protecting America’s Future.

We are grateful to North Carolina Representative Mike Schietzelt for his leadership, advocacy, and support of the Wireless Research Center (WRC), and for recognizing the critical role North Carolina can play in strengthening our nation’s defense industrial base.

This $500,000 investment represents far more than funding for research infrastructure. It is an investment in national security, technological innovation, economic competitiveness, and the men and women who defend our nation.

As emerging threats evolve, our ability to protect America’s critical infrastructure and maintain a technological advantage over our adversaries depends on more than developing innovative technologies. It requires the infrastructure to securely research, prototype, test, and transition those technologies into operational capabilities.

Today, one of the greatest barriers facing universities, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and emerging defense technology companies is access to classified research facilities, secure communications, and specialized engineering environments. Without these capabilities, promising technologies struggle to cross the divide between laboratory innovation and national defense application.

At WRC, we are working to close that gap.

Through our partnerships with research universities, federal laboratories, industry, and the Department of War (DoW), we are building an interconnected ecosystem of secure research and development capabilities across North Carolina. Our vision includes expanding classified infrastructure, advancing quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, next-generation communications, and human-machine integration, while connecting these capabilities to our nation’s warfighters and critical infrastructure protection missions.

There is an important distinction between benefiting economically from defense spending and contributing meaningfully to the nation’s defense industrial base.

North Carolina already has a significant military presence and benefits from the economic activity it generates. But our ambition must be greater. We must build the infrastructure, technical workforce, research capacity, and commercialization pathways that allow North Carolina companies and institutions to develop, test, manufacture, and deliver the technologies our warfighters need.

Working alongside partners such as MCNC and leveraging unique assets including the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) in Western North Carolina, WRC is committed to creating a statewide network of innovation that connects our universities, entrepreneurs, industry partners, and defense customers.

Our goal is not simply to attract defense dollars to North Carolina. It is to make North Carolina indispensable to America’s national security and technological superiority.

Thank you, Representative Schietzelt, for recognizing this opportunity and helping us take another important step toward making that vision a reality.

Conceive it. Prove it. Transition it.