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Sweet Home Alabama

August 13, 2024
Command Sergeant Major John Foley speaking at the 2024 Breakfast of Champions, in Huntsville, Alabama, August 7, 2024.

We celebrated and highlighted our Missile Defense Champion community in Huntsville Alabama for the 22nd time on August 7, 2024, at our annual kickoff Breakfast of Champions at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium. This is a tradition and legacy that MDAA has done with our Air and Missile Defense Leaders in our nation’s bedrock of missile defense. 

“This is a world championship breakfast. This is a world championship team and it’s not about playing for a world championship; it’s about winning a world championship.” 

– Riki Ellison, Breakfast of Champions, 7 August 2024, Huntsville, Alabama. 

Our people come first as they lead the coalition of the willing and the winning to establish, develop, grow, execute, and sustain integrated Missile Defense to help preserve our freedoms and status quo in the current World Order. 

“We’re not a think tank, we’re a do tank. A people tank. A relationship tank.” 

– Riki Ellison, Breakfast of Champions, 7 August 2024, Huntsville, Alabama. 

MDA Director Lt. Gen Heath Collins, ARMY SMDC Commander LTG Sean Gainey, PEO Missiles and Space BG Frank Lozano, and USASMDC CMS John Foley highlighted individual champions in their organizations that are essential to critical issues of defense for the Nation and the World. 

“We have to have our expensive veteran players but as Bill Walsh told us, it’s those guys on the bench that aren’t on the field that make the core of the team in order to enable those superstar players to do their job.” 

– Riki Ellison, Breakfast of Champions, 7 August 2024, Huntsville, Alabama. 

The strategic environment is rapidly evolving, and we must contribute in whatever way we can to enhance the cost curve revolution. We are a do-tank, a team-tank, a win-tank, we are a world championship team, people matter, and people make the difference. We can’t win with just offense; we need to be one team integrated with our allies to win. 

The 2024 Huntsville Breakfast of Champions Awardees: 

Katherine O’Conner

Anh Huy Nguyen  

Emily Hornberger 

Ms. Jeannie Sommer

Mr. William Black 

Ms. Jennifer Montgomery

SPC Chase Betsinger

SFC Monte Perkins 

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Mission Statement

MDAA’s mission is to make the world safer by advocating for the development and deployment of missile defense systems to defend the United States, its armed forces and its allies against missile threats.

MDAA is the only organization in existence whose primary mission is to educate the American public about missile defense issues and to recruit, organize, and mobilize proponents to advocate for the critical need of missile defense. We are a non-partisan membership-based and membership-funded organization that does not advocate on behalf of any specific system, technology, architecture or entity.

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