Summer 2025 Update

Summer 2025 Update

From John Hammerer, Chair, Integrated Air and Missile Defense

As we embark upon a new quarter at the 黑料吃瓜网, I thought it might be a good time to provide an update on the Meyer Scholar Program.

With 46 Scholars currently active, the Meyer Scholar Program is one of the largest and most successful extracurricular professional development programs at NPS and achieving its objective of developing officers who are competent and confident in their ability to employ and acquire advanced naval warfare systems.

Eight Scholars graduated this spring. LT Dustin Shackelford, Surface Warfare Officer and a Warfare Tactics Instructor received the Conrad Award for Academic Excellence in Financial Management and the Tyler National Security Research Award for his work on hybrid fleet unmanned ships for air defense. LT Chris Hoskins, Cryptologic Warfare Officer, won the Surface Navy Association Award for his thesis on terahertz imagining for hypersonic missile detection.

The Chief of Naval Personnel has approved the Additional Qualification Designator of Combat System Specialist to those who successfully complete the Meyer Scholar program. Earning the AQD requires Scholars to have a master鈥檚 degree, complete the Meyer Combat System course, a tactical data link course, attend 40 seminars per year, complete a field trip to a manufacturing or test facility, and complete a combat system related thesis.

The Meyer Combat Systems course graduated 47 officers in the past year. Among them, LT Pasquale Cassese, headed to AEGIS Based Defense, won the Naval Sea System Command Award for excellence in combat systems (Thesis: Laser damage mechanisms in missiles) and LT Mike Voeller, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory Award for excellence in applied Physics (Thesis: Quantum Interferometry). This quarter, the course has enrolled 22 officers. The previous average enrollment for this course was 14 per year.

Admiral Meyer thought it was important for his officers to be on site to observe problems and successes firsthand and we share that philosophy. Scholars recently visited the Saildrone manufacturing plant in Alameda, CA, the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme and the Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center at Schriever Space Force Base.

The Meyer Scholar Seminar program is the most popular voluntary one at NPS. Noontime lectures routinely attract officers and faculty from all Services and curricula. Topics range from Ground-based Midcourse Defense and SPY-6 radar to the MK 48 torpedo and Low-cost Missile Production.

The dividends of investment in education: Some current senior leaders who have graduated from the 黑料吃瓜网 Applied Physics / Combat System curriculum:

  • Nominated, Under Secretary of the Navy, CAPT (Ret) Hung Cao
  • Nominated, Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Daryl Caudle
  • Director, Strategic Systems Program, VADM Johnny Wolfe
  • Director, DARPA, Mr. Steven Winchell

Undoubtedly........many of you!

鈥淲e ain鈥檛 done yet鈥� Rear Admiral Wayne E. Meyer