November 8, 2022 Follow and Support MDAA   MDAA Alert: Salute to Service Riki Ellison, Founder and Chairman of MDAA, with the recipients of the 2022 Alaska Missile Defenders of the Year Awards in Anchorage, Alaska on Nov. 4, 2022.   Dear Members and Friends, “We’re winner’s and we associate with winners to win. You’re world champions, and there is no better place in the world to be right now than here in Alaska. With what we're seeing, with proliferation, especially of North Korea, you have held the Homeland safe for 20 years. We look back to when we first put those GBI’s in those silos, I was there in August of 2004, and you’ve gone through everything with these GBIs, three different generations of those. The resilience of that, the politics of that, the SLEP of that, the resilience of that, the new movement to get the NGI’s. You have won every single year, you have won, they can’t beat us.” “We will present the first ever Don Young Memorial Award. Don Young was with us in this room eight years ago for the first Missile Defenders of the Year Awards in Alaska, so was Senator Murkowski, Senator Stevens wife Catherine Stevens, and so was Lieutenant Governor Treadwell. “Don Young was the authorizer and Ted Stevens was the appropriator, as they built Alaska together.” “We were built to support and advocate for the deployment of missile defense because we believe that it's the truth to the truth that it is making our world a safer place, and not having it is not making our world a safer place.” “Remarkably in 3 years our country turned, and we put silos and GBIs in 2006 in Fort Greely Alaska. We put a sea of NASAM systems 360 around our Capital, full guard, we knocked that out. Now, we’ve succeeded in 20 years of beating and winning that battle against boutique threats, North Korea and Iran, but now the world’s shifted, and you’re in the midst of it.” Riki Ellison at the 2022 Missile Defender of the Year Ceremony in Anchorage, Alaska, on November 5th, 2022 The Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance hosted the 2022 Missile Defender of the Year Award Ceremony in Anchorage, Alaska, on Saturday November 5, 2022. It marks the 68th Missile Defender of the Year awarding 850 recipients in total, including the 23 recipients recognized this year for the 8th Alaska Missile Defenders of the Year. We are honored to have the Don Young Memorial Award go to the MVP of the sensors in Alaska annually. This will be in compliment with our annual Ted Stevens Memorial Award which goes to the MVP of the best interceptor operators in Alaska. The Don Young award is represented by an Alaskan Bear and the Ted Stevens award is represented by a Silver Salmon. This is the first year that we included our Alaska air defense missile defenders for our awards, including USAF AWACS and the F-22s. We honored our Cobra Dane as well as our Clear Space Station missile defenders. Our event honored and unified Air and Missile Defenders from the U.S. Army, Alaska’s Army National Guard, U..S. Air Force, U.S. Air Force Reserve Command, Alaska’s Air National Guard, and U.S. Space Force. Presenting at our ceremony to recognize the World Champions of Alaska were World Champions in their own merit and service: Maj General Duke Pirak, Deputy Director, Air National Guard; Brig Gen Tracy Smith, Commander, Alaska Air National Guard; Col Joseph Paladino, Commander, 100th Missile Defense Brigade; Col Kevin Jamieson, Commander, 3rd Wing; Col Philip Lancaster, Commander, 3rd Operations Group; Col Tim Brower, Chief of Staff, Alaska Army National Guard; Col Aaron Kelsey, Commander, 38th Troop Command; Col Ron Oliver, Commander, 168th Operations Group; Lt Col Eric Vantrease, Commander of the 213th Space Warning Radar; Lt Col Jared Lemmons, Director of Operations, 962nd Airborne Air Control Squadron; Lt Col Michael Odgers, Commander, 268th Security Forces Squadron; LTC Christopher Stutz, Commander, 49th Missile Defense Battalion; Maj Jeffrey “JB” Brown, Director of Operations, 13th Space Warning Squadron; CW4 (Ret) Nick Capozzi, Military and Veteran Advisor to U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan. Greg Kaplan, Military and Veteran Advisor to U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski. The 2022 Missile Defender of the Year Awardees Don Young Memorial Awardee Captain Lee Dockery 213th Space Warning Squadron *** F-22 Awardees Captain Mitchell “Shift” Willis 525th Fighter Squadron *** Major Christopher A. Boyer 302nd Fighter Squadron *** AWACS Awardees Captain Zachary M. Hollopeter 962nd Airborne Air Control Squadron *** Major Christian J. Shipp 962nd Airborne Air Control Squadron *** Clear SFS Site Defender Awardees Senior Airman Keeana Fielder 268th Security Forces Squadron *** Technical Sergeant Gabriel Ramirez 268th Security Forces Squadron *** Cobra Dane Awardee Technical Sergeant Wesley S. Jordan 13th Space Warning Squadron *** 13th SWS Awardee Lieutenant Jeffrey Dunagin 13th Space Warning Squadron *** 213th SWS Awardee Technical Sergeant Aaron Trujillo 213th Space Warning Squadron *** Fort Greely Site Defender Awardee Sergeant Domingo Cortes MP GBI Security Company *** Sergeant Sarah Brice MP GBI Security Company *** Sergeant Giovanny Flores MP GBI Security Company *** Sergeant Mackay Kim MP GBI Security Company *** 49th Missile Defense Battalion Top Crews Sergeant First Class Angel Perez 2021 Delta Crew *** First Lieutenant Robert Hughes 2021 Delta Crew *** Major Jorge Lorenzana 2021 Delta Crew *** Sergeant Zachary Hladik 2022 Delta Crew *** Staff Sergeant Michael Santiago 2021/2022 Delta Crew *** First Lieutenant Kenneth McCoy 2022 Delta Crew *** First Lieutenant Taylor Parsons 2021/2022 Delta Crew *** Captain Justus Neumann 2022 Delta Crew *** Ted Stevens Memorial Awardee Captain Ryan Hairston 49th Missile Defense Battalion *** “It is time to dream big, and be big. What you see tonight is a unification of this team. The diversity of this team. We have to have that unity across our services for U.S. Homeland defense. There’s no question about it. We talk about it, but we don’t have it. And the reason we have to have it is because we are playing against the best now. We can’t do it alone; just like one service can't do U.S. Homeland missile defense alone, we have to have our allies.” “We’re going to have to move on this for U.S. Homeland defense; to move together, with unity, with our allies and partners to beat this threat. The threat is coming.” Riki Ellison at the 2022 Missile Defender of the Year Ceremony in Anchorage, Alaska, on November 5th, 2022 We salute to the service of our men and women of our joint services on this vital and honorable mission of Missile Defense of our Homeland. Click here to view photos from the 8th Alaska Missile Defenders of the Year event. Respectfully, Riki Ellison Chairman and Founder Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance   Click Here to Join MDAA _____________________________________________________________________ MDAA is a non-profit, non-partisan tax-exempt 501(c) (4) organization. Our mission is to make the world safer by advocating for the development and deployment of missile defense systems to defend the United States and its allies against missile threats. We are a membership-funded organization that does not advocate on behalf of any specific system, technology, architecture or entity. Founded in 2002, MDAA is the only organization in existence whose primary mission is to recruit, organize, and mobilize proponents to advocate for the critical need of missile defense. 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