On December 23, 1969, the United States Navy started the development of the Aegis combat system to be the brain of its future ships and which would later become what is the world's greatest platform for 360 degree integrated air and missile defense.
In September 2018, construction for the Long-Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) began at Clear Air Force Station in Alaska and it will be deployed and operational in 2022. This S-band radar, with 6,000 modules brings forward the first persistent missile defense discrimination sensor for the Ground-Based Missile Defense (GMD) system which defends all of the United States homeland and will increase the reliability and efficiency of GMD's Ground-Based Interceptors (GBIs).
Both of these systems will be at the forefront of defending the United States from nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) over the next decade.
On December 13, 2019, at the birthplace of Aegis, MDAA was honored to get to recognize excellence of leadership in missile defense and celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Aegis combat system. We honored and recognized the engineers and Sailors who best displayed excellence in the continued development and operation of the Aegis system today and the engineers that are developing and deploying the LRDR in Alaska.
Here are our 2019 New Jersey Missile Defense Champions from our event in Camden, New Jersey.
2019 New Jersey Warfighter Missile Defense Champions
ET1 Phillip Ott
FCA1 Michael Sheldon
2019 New Jersey Engineer Missile Defense Champions
Yusif Akhund
Kim Tighe
AJ Zampella
Thom John Sooy
Mike Wolfrom
Warren Mak
Pat Carroll
Kayla O'Malley
Chris Gillotte
Brett Helbig
Joanis Ploumitsakos
Derrick Walker
2019 New Jersey Aegis TechRep Missile Defense Champions
FCA1 Evan Horn
FCA1 Nicholas Savage
FCA1 Nicholas Adams
John Chiesa
Mike Orlando
Stephen Palmer
Cameron MacGregor
An Integrated System and an Integrated Team - its the people that matter and leading them by excellence of leadership is recognized and honored.
One Team, One fight
