Page 184 - MY STORY

I led a small team to capture this program, worth about

$1,000,000 to $2,000,000.

Our approach was to capture subcontractors that

manufactured the satellite subsystems such as optical &
RF sensors, solar arrays, thermal control, attitude control,
and antennas. We would use them to help us define

subsystems currently in use by the military, and work
with our “hardening” team to counter the HEL threat to
their devices by designing and building test components

that could be exposed to our combined laser/vacuum
environments.

Since the AFRL Request for Proposal (RFP) was not
released we had plenty of opportunities to discuss our
approach with the AFRL folk and get feedback on what

they thought. All the vibes we got back were good. My
experience and knowledge base in satellite systems was

limited, and I tried very, very hard to get MDAC’s
electronics and satellite subsystem folk to support our bid
and proposal effort. Dave F, the department head of

Electronics and Sensor Systems had no interest in
supporting “such a weird effort.”