Not All Former Military Pilots Are the Same

Previously I had written about the former military folks at Northrop Grumman.

Nowadays they are hired because they "walk the walk" and "talk the talk" of our military customers and Northrop Grumman management needs and wants to have some kind of rapport with the customer.

Some of these pilot-types are really smart guys. Corey Moore, who is now Sector Vice President, Advanced Concepts and Integrated Solutions at Northrop Grumman Corporate Headquarters is an example. He was in the Systems Analysis group in the 1980's. As a F-18 pilot he wanted to be home more with his family.

Corey Moore even had some exposure to the THUNDER campaign model. He was SO SMART that he realized that didn't want to do the type of analysis that we were trying to do. He left Systems Analysis and went on to bigger and better things. Now he gets to move to Virginia.

John Haberbush is another smart guy. He's was also a F-18 pilot working in Systems Analysis at the same time as Corey Moore. John also had some experience with the THUNDER campaign model, and came up with two very smart sayings about analysis:

"If it looks easy, it's hard to do."

"If it looks hard, it's impossible to do."

John Haberbush was smart enough to get a job as an airline pilot and left Northrop Grumman.

There are other pilot-types at Northrop Grumman who were good at being pilots but perhaps not too good at anything else but "walking the walk" and "talking the talk" with the customer and building Powerpoint charts for the customer to look at.

For example, there is currently a "Program Manager" at Northrop Grumman (name not disclosed) who came to Northrop Grumman as a retired USAF colonel. He started out in Systems Analysis years ago. He sounded good, and looked good. Somewhat smart guy who was working on a fuel allocation problem and was able to boil it down to a mathematical description having six variables whose relationships were defined by five equations, all of which he was able to figure out. Smart guy!

Good start, but he was totally confused as to why he could not come up with a "unique" solution to his fuel allocation problem. Most mathematicians will tell you that to solve for an unique solution for six variables, you need to have six equations - he had only five equations.

He would NOT believe that six equations were needed instead of the five equations that he had, and would NOT believe the concept of there being an INFINITE family of solutions (values for the six variables) that would satisfy the five equations.

Conrad Batchelder in the next cubicle overhead the discussion and came over with his Hewlett Packard HP-15C calculator and SHOWED him two sets of values for the six variables that satisfied the five equations.

The retired USAF colonel left the cubicle shaking his head, staring at the sheet of paper that Conrad had prepared for him.

I still don't know if he believed the idea that he needed six equations to get an unique solution for the six variables.

Today he is a unnamed "Program Manager" at Northrop Grumman.

No, he is not Thomas Lee Hull.


Disclaimer: SORRY - This is only what I know from my point of view. No lies, just what I see as the truth.