Both were RF engineers who had worked together at General Electric and at SRC Inc. before establishing Anaren to focus on leveraging the stripline manufacturing technique.

[1] The company began trading on the Nasdaq in 1972,[3] and its first customers were aerospace and defense firms including Hughes Aircraft, Litton Industries (now part of Northrop Grumman), and Raytheon.

[1] Early contracts included: a microwave landing system for jetliners funded by the U.S. Department of Defense under FAA supervision; wideband microwave tracking receivers for use in direction-finding systems; and DFD (digital frequency discriminator) and ESM (electronic support measure) devices to assist jets and ships in detecting, identifying, and eluding enemy radar signals.

[1] The Cold War arms race drove the bulk of the company's business, and by 1981, it had 200 employees, achieved over US$8 million in sales, and constructed a 80,000 square feet (7,400 m2) headquarters in East Syracuse, New York.

In 2008, it acquired Syracuse-based MS Kennedy and Littleton, Colorado–based Unicircuit, Inc, which were added to the company's Space & Defense Group.