Whereas, on March 10, 2017, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (in this preamble referred to as APL ), located in Laurel, Maryland, celebrates the 75th anniversary of the founding of APL on March 10, 1942; Whereas, less than 4 months after the attack on the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, APL was established to perfect and help field the radio proximity fuze, one of the most closely guarded wartime secrets of the United States; Whereas historians have ranked the development of the radio proximity fuze as one of the 3 most important technological developments of World War II, along with the development of radar and the atomic bomb; Whereas, during and after World War II, APL developed the first generation of Navy surface-to-air missiles and associated propulsion, guidance, control, and targeting technologies; Whereas APL developed the initial phased array radar system, called AMFAR, for the Navy that provided the scanning, tracking, and targeting necessary to defend the ships of the United States against simultaneous aircraft and missile raids; Whereas APL created the first satellite-based global navigation system, called Transit, the forerunner of modern GPS, to serve the ballistic missile submarine force of the United States and provide essential capabilities to the Navy from 1964 until the 1990s; Whereas APL developed prototypes, experiments, ocean physics research, and engineering models that unlocked the potential of towed sonar arrays, groundbreaking developments that revolutionized anti-submarine warfare and guided stealth designs for multiple generations of submarines of the United States; Whereas APL led development of the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability that revolutionized air defenses by enabling ships to engage aircraft and missiles not seen by the radars of the ships by using composite radar tracks created from the radars of ships within the battle group