EARNING HIS ACQUISITION WINGS M MAJ. DANIEL BROWN
COMMAND/ORGANIZATION: Aircraft Survivability Equipment Testing Division, Aviation Flight Test Directorate, U.S. Army Redstone Test Center, U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command
TITLE: Experimental test pilot and division chief
YEARS OF SERVICE IN WORKFORCE: 4 YEARS OF MILITARY SERVICE: 12
DAWIA CERTIFICATIONS: Level III in test and evaluation
EDUCATION: M.S. in aerospace engineer- ing, University of Maryland, College Park; B.S. in mechanical engineering, United States Military Academy at West Point
AWARDS: Bronze Star Medal; Army Senior Aviator Badge; U.S. Cavalry Order of the Spur (Gold, Silver); Army Avia- tion Association of America Honorable Order of St. Michael (Bronze); Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal
aj. Daniel Brown just wants to make things a little better for the next guy.
“Getting deployed Soldiers the capabilities they need to do their diffi- cult job and then return home is always the goal, and I remind myself of that every day. I have been that deployed warfighter, and I want to
make sure our current and future Soldiers have better lethality, capability and surviv- ability than I did.”
Brown is an Army experimental test pilot (XP) with the Aviation Flight Test Directorate at U.S. Army Redstone Test Center, Alabama, part of the U.S. Army Test and Eval- uation Command. As chief of the Aircraft Survivability Equipment Testing Division, he manages and executes engineering and developmental flight tests of various aircraft components and systems, mainly survivability systems incorporated into rotary-wing and fixed-wing Army aircraft. “Tese technologies aid the warfighter’s threat awareness in flight and greatly increase their chances of avoiding—and even defeating—complex radar, infrared and laser-based threats,” said Brown.
Brown was an aviation officer before coming to the Army Acquisition Workforce and completed two tours in Iraq with the 1st Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Infantry Divi- sion. After finishing graduate school in 2014 through the Advanced Civil Schooling program, he spent two years teaching in the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engi- neering at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
While teaching, he applied to be an Army XP. “I thought it was the best way for me to align my personal passion—aviation—with my professional Army aviation experience and my educational background,” he said. Teaching at West Point “was great prepara- tion for test pilot school,” he noted. “Tree or four times a year, we took cadets up in Cessnas and Lakotas to gather data for the lab portion of our aerospace engineering courses. Addressing engineering topics while in flight, collecting data and flying within tight parameters—those skills are a big part of learning to be a test pilot.”
Te XP application process included being accepted into the Acquisition Corps as a func- tional area 51A (program management) officer while also completing the multistage selection process to be an XP candidate. “While fundamentally 51As, XPs are branded 51Ts [test and evaluation officers] as well,” Brown explained, “and we must first serve in a 51T position and meet the associated requirements, including Level II certification in T&E [test and evaluation] in two years,” he explained. Brown attended the yearlong U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. Grad- uating from that school incurred him a T&E officer utilization tour requirement but also counted toward many of his T&E certification requirements. (Utilization tours are extensions of military duty, for a specific period after personnel receive specialized train- ing or education, in which the individual utilizes that training or education.)
“Since 51T isn’t currently a primary acquisition career field, we also need to get 51A key developmental experience after serving the 51T utilization tour,” Brown said. “Most Army XPs serve 51A time as an assistant product manager after their initial XP
92
Army AL&T Magazine
Spring 2019
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128
