For ten years, I proudly supported our country's warfighters as a civil servant at the the Naval Air Warfare Centers.
My first first five years with NAVAIR were at China Lake in the Weapons Division and the next five were at Pax River in the Aircraft Division.
MQ-4C Triton is the Navy’s newest unmanned Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft platform. From 2009 to 2014, I supported the Persistent Maritime Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program Office as the Flight Controls Software Subject Matter Expert. I worked with an integrated team of contractors, Navy civilians and military to develop the Triton system from their existing RQ-4B Global Hawk. My responsibilities included developing system requirements, overseeing software development, reviewing software artifacts, evaluating contractor performance, and conducting engineering investigations. I am glad to report that after four years on the program and many days on travel, Triton successfully completed first flight on May 22, 2013! For my direct contributions to this achievement, I was individually recognized by the program manager, Capt. Hoke, and the Program Executive Office lead, Rear Adm. Winter. Additionally, my team was awarded the Air Vehicle Engineering Department Director’s Award, an annual award that recognizes a team within the Air Vehicle Engineering Community that exhibits team accomplishments and significant achievements that exemplify teamwork, technical acumen, and overall solutions-oriented approaches to customer support.
AGM/RGM-84D Harpoon is the Navy’s premier all-weather, over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile system. After three years supporting the Harpoon/SLAM-ER Technical Project Office in general, and significant effort on the Harpoon Block III upgrade in particular, the Navy decided to cancel the upgrade program. During my time with Harpoon, I supported many different activities, including: systems engineering, simulation development, simulation accreditation, formal qualification testing, integration testing, flight test, data analysis, subject matter expert, and team lead. I was very fortunate to work with a remarkable team, including some of the greatest weapons experts in the Navy. Prior to the program’s cancellation, I was honored to receive special recognition by the Project Office for my outstanding support and leadership. I am glad to report that my three years supporting the Harpoon upgrade were not in vain. The Harpoon Block III program was eventually reborn as Harpoon Block II+ and recently completed a successful live fire test.
SRTGT is a semi-autonomous truck used in weapons testing. I was part of a small Navy team that did the original design and development of this project. Our goal was to create a highly maneuverable ground target for use on weapons-testing ranges. The problem with existing targets was that they were remote controlled and the delay during operation made them difficult to maneuver. Our solution was to manually drive the routes once, and then we could command the vehicle to autonomously repeat the course. I was the principal developer of the vehicle’s control software, which was written in C and runs on the VxWorks RTOS. This was a really fun and fast-paced project, reminiscent of my dot-com days. One aspect of the software development I am especially proud of is the test-driven development approach I used during development. After one year, we successfully built two trucks and demonstrated the system. I left the program to support Harpoon just as SRTGT was transitioning from development to production. If you watch this NAVAIR recruiting video, you will see my truck blown up three times (at 2:15, 2:33 and 2:40), and its control computer being installed (2:59).
I cannot think of a prouder statement when asked what our occupation may be than to say 'I serve the United States of America.'President John F. Kennedy speaking at China Lake