The establishment had its origins in the Royal Engineers Wireless Telegraphy Experimental Section founded at Aldershot in the very early part of the twentieth century.
[3] The establishment was renamed SRDE at the start of the Second World War; it moved briefly to Horsham before settling in Christchurch in 1943 after the radar teams left to Malvern.
It participated in the U.S. Interim Defense Communication Satellite Program (IDCSP), and a trans-Atlantic link to a U.S. station was first established on 18 June 1966.
[4] It also led the development of the British Skynet 1 and 2 military communications satellites, the first of which launched 22 November 1969, and performed their initial in-orbit testing.
[4] In 1976, under the Director of John Mills, SRDE merged with the Royal Radar Establishment (RRE) and the Services Electronic Research Laboratory (SERL) to form the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE), headquartered in Malvern, Worcestershire.