CHINA LAKE, Calif., –Dennis McKinney recently announced his retirement from government service after more than 33 years. Friends and coworkers will celebrate at a luncheon held in his honor Wednesday, December 14, at China Lake’s Paradise Café.

McKinney worked at China Lake for more than 33 years in the field of threat infrared weapon technologies, including modeling and simulation. He currently manages the Threat IR Weapons office and NAVAIR’s T-SPIL (Threat Signal Processor in the Loop) capability.

Earlier this year, McKinney was recognized for his distinguished service when he was awarded the Bill Goodell Memorial Award during the Military Sensing Symposium on Infrared Countermeasures that was held April 26, in Monterey, Calif. The Bill Goodell Award committee annually selects candidates for this award then the committee chairman presents the award during the week of the symposium.

During his long career McKinney has worked on the development flight testing of the AWW-7, AWW-9 and AWW-13 Walleye Data Link systems. In addition, he accumulated about 150 flight hours in the TA-7C and the TA-4J attack aircraft; he served as the head of the Advanced Concepts Branch, working on the Sidewinder concept development; became lead for the BOA-2 Concept team and eventually, served as the China Lake lead for the ASRAAM evaluation team. He found his passion while working at the threat infrared weapons activity. McKinney then assumed the China Lake Technical Project lead for the Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) in which he was involved in virtually all aspects of the program. He was also appointed lead for Directed Energy Thrust in the fields of high power lasers and microwave.

McKinney said that “if your passion for this type of work is strong, there are no limits to what can be accomplished.”

As he described it, McKinney worked with an awesome team of scientists, engineers and technicians solving extremely difficult problems that positively impact the susceptibility and survivability of Navy, Marine Corps, Army and Air Force aircraft.

“Working with a dedicated group of world-class people within NAWCWD has been a wonderful opportunity and enabled them to invent revolutionary modeling and simulation techniques that remain unrivaled.”

The Goodell award honors significant contributions to the electro-optical and IRCM community, and is named after Bill Goodell, a research physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory specializing in Electro-Optics/Infrared countermeasures.

About the award, McKinney said “This was a total surprise to me. I am honored to be recognized by my peers but I know it is only possible due to the efforts of the awesome team that I work with. My co-workers work their hearts out and I know that the success I’ve had comes from the people I am lucky enough to work with.”