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At the Forefront of the Next Decade

December 17, 2019
2019 New Jersey engineer and Sailor champions at the 2019 New Jersey Reception of Champions event in Camden, New Jersey on December 13, 2019.

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

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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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