NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER WEAPONS DIVISION, CHINA LAKE, Calif. - Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division teams and individuals were among those honored during the annual NAVAIR Commander’s Awards on March 14.

Naval Air Systems Command received a total of 84 NAVAIR Commander’s Award nominations in its 18th year. Of those hopefuls, the teleconferenced ceremony from Patuxent River, Maryland recognized 21 Commander’s Award winners.

“This is the second year where we’ve tried to focus our award categories directly on our strategic initiatives of speed and readiness at NAVAIR,” Commander Vice Adm. Paul Grosklags said in his opening remarks. “I was pleased to see, again, that we got a huge number of really quality candidates. The depth and breadth of what’s represented in this room and across VTC is eye-watering.”

Nominations were accepted in four categories: Business Innovation, Technical Innovation, Improving Fleet Readiness and Increasing Speed Capability to the Fleet.

The Counter Unmanned Air System Rapid Deployment Capability Team, supported by teammates from the Weapons Division, placed first in the Increasing Speed Capability to the Fleet category. In less than a year, the team fielded a critical capability at two national sites within tremendous time constraints and at an affordable cost to meet an urgent warfighter need.

NAWCWD teammates were Charris Gabaldon, Alberto Gean, Kelli Pickett, Adam Price, Kim Seaman, Scott Slaughter, Riley Smith, Steven Walker and Kyle Woo.

In the Technical Innovation category, NAWCWD’s Multiple Obstructed Brokered Hub Team, led by Nathan Kielman, brought home first place. Kielman and his team were recognized for developing the Hub to interface mobile computing devices with existing embedded systems on NAVAIR platforms and successfully achieved bidirectional communication between a commercial mobile device and an F/A-18 Legacy Hornet mission computer.

Kielman’s teammates, Gabriel Anderson, Eric Burkhardt, Alexander Horstman, Anthony Kunkel, Justin Loundagin, Christopher Melendez, Orlando Mielke, Mark Milian, Jeffrey Rohrbacker, Jonathan Surmi, Trent Trepanier and Alvin Quintana, shared in this honor.

The Liquid-Fuel-Fire Alternative for Fast Cookoff Munitions Testing Team, co-led by NAWCWD’s Dr. Ephraim Washburn, earned an Honorable Mention in the Technical Innovation category. The team was recognized for demonstrating and validating the use of propane as a viable alternative to kerosene-based fuels for required fast cookoff testing in light of environmental concerns. The project successfully showed a reduction in the total carbon emissions, fuel consumption and annual maintenance cost.

NAWCWD teammates were Ross Falen, Kevin Ford and Jeffrey Prevost.

NAWCWD led the Small Business Advocacy Awards taking home honors in both the Individual and Team categories. Under the leadership of Kim Matsunaga, NAWCWD’s Test and Evaluation and Logistics, Fleet Readiness Center Southwest and Naval Air Technical Data and Engineering Service Center requirements were responsible for approximately 40 percent of NAWCWD’s Small Business obligations in 2017. Among those obligations were to Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses, Woman Owned Small Businesses and Small Disadvantaged Businesses.

In the Small Business Team Category, the Engineering Support Services Acquisition Team, led by Debbie Linck, was recognized for working with NAWCWD’s Office of Small Business Programs for market research training during the last full and open competition resulting in an Industry Day, which was attended by seven Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses.

NAWCWD teammates were Blaine Ashworth, Chris Bachman, Caitlin Brigdon, Dave Clark, Janice McGarry, Cheryl McGuire, Ian Patin, Marty Peterson, Gerald Powell, Jeffrey Roquemore and Thomas Vitale.