I'd like to take a few minutes at the outset of this meeting to welcome you to the sixth annual review of research Progress in Quantitative NDE and to provide you with some perspective for the program that you will hear and participate in this week. As you know, the review is centered upon research work sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force (Drs. Michael Buckley and Joseph Moyzis, Program managers). In order to further promote technical interchange, however, we have included related research efforts in this meeting that are sponsored by agencies other than DARPA and the Air Force. I'll focus my remaining remarks on three topics - the DARPA/AF goals, our approach for the attainment of those goals, and some accomplishments to date. I hope that these comments will provide you with a perspective of the week's program.