Executive Director, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division

Mr. Stephen Cricchi serves as Executive Director for the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD), tasked with the responsibility for ensuring that the overall mission is executed in a safe and efficient manner and business and financial objectives are met. He was appointed to the position in July 2021.

Previously, beginning in March 2020, Mr. Cricchi was Director of the Engineering and Cyber Warfare Group, one of six groups leading Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) where he oversaw Command-wide engineering policy and planning for airworthiness and safety of flight, cyber warfare, mission engineering, and digital and information technologies. He was responsible for carrying out the group’s mission of increasing current readiness and speed to the fleet through the transformation of NAVAIR’s systems engineering capabilities and applying model-based systems engineering to conduct test and evaluation activities. Mr. Cricchi also served as one of two Deputy NAVAIR Chief Engineers.

In May 2015, Mr. Cricchi was selected as the Assistant Commander for Corporate Operations and Total Force for NAVAIR, where he was responsible for all NAVAIR command business operations including command administration, total force management, military and civilian human resource programs, security, public affairs, business and financial management, and infrastructure business operations.

In November 2005, Mr. Cricchi was named as the second Director, Integrated Systems Evaluation, Experimentation and Test Department within NAVAIR. He was responsible for the efforts of over 3,000 flight test engineers, military test pilots and project officers, aircraft maintainers, acquisition professionals, and associated contractor support personnel performing flight test and experimentation for the Naval Aviation Enterprise and other customers. Mr. Cricchi's responsibilities included the operation of two test air wings with approximately 200 aircraft and the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School.

In March 2005, he was selected as the first Director for Flight Test Engineering, where he served as the Chief Flight Test Engineer for Naval Aviation. He was responsible for managing and directing more than 600 engineers and engineering technicians performing integrated systems evaluation, experimentation and test across three sites within NAVAIR.

In April 2001, Mr. Cricchi was appointed Deputy Director for the Test and Evaluation Engineering Department at NAVAIR. He was responsible to the Director for the technical efforts of the department's personnel supporting test and evaluation of Naval Aviation weapons systems programs.