The Office of Nonproliferation Research and Development is the principal organization in the U.S. government that conducts long-term basic and applied research, development, testing, and evaluation into new nuclear nonproliferation, counterproliferation, and counterterrorism technologies.  The Office strives to reduce the threat to national security posed by nuclear weapons proliferation and illicit nuclear materials trafficking by developing new and novel technologies that can be translated into useful tools.

The Office develops applicable technologies, demonstrates and validates fieldable prototypes and, provides operational hardware and software for national security systems.  Underpinning the R&D mission, are three objectives which strengthen the U.S. response to current and projected worldwide threat of nuclear proliferation and the diversion of special nuclear material.

The R&D Program is divided into two program areas:  Proliferation Detection and Nuclear Detonation Detection.