[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 126 (Thursday, August 1, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5764-S5766]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REMEMBERING KEITH L. ENGLANDER

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, on behalf of the men and women who 
serve at the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the countless 
Americans who have benefited from his distinguished service to our 
nation, I rise to pay tribute to the life and career of Mr. Keith L. 
Englander, the MDA's former director for engineering, who passed away 
on May 2, 2024 at the age of 70.
  Mr. Englander gave 45 years of exemplary Federal service to our 
country and was the driving engineering force behind the missile 
defense system that protects the United States, our deployed forces, 
and our allies from missile attacks. He took on and conquered the 
toughest engineering problems during his service with the Department of 
the Navy, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), and 
later the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMD) and the MDA.
  Mr. Englander's passion for aviation was inspired by his life near 
the Naval Station at Norfolk, VA; volunteering at the Franklin 
Institute in Philadelphia, PA; and the successes of NASA's Gemini and 
Apollo programs. In high school, he joined the Junior Engineering and 
Technical Society and was a member of the local Boy Scout Explorer Post 
focused on space exploration. He graduated from the Virginia 
Polytechnic Institute in 1975 with a BS in aerospace and ocean 
engineering and soon embarked on a long career of civil service.
  Mr. Englander's career began with the Department of the Navy in 1975, 
where he was responsible for the design and development of propellant 
devices for rocket motors. He later served as chief engineer for the 
Navy A-6 attack aircraft. He left the Navy for SDIO in 1992 to tackle 
the pure engineering challenge of intercepting ballistic missiles using 
space-based weapons. As leader of the Brilliant Pebbles System 
Engineering and Integration Directorate, he addressed significant 
challenges, such as miniaturization, that pushed the boundaries of 
1990s technology.
  In 1995, Mr. Englander assumed the role of the National Missile 
Defense

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(NMD) System engineer and later served as technical director, 
responsible for all aspects of the NMD system that would eventually 
become the ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) element that continues 
to defend our homeland from missile attack. Always an innovator, he was 
the first NMD manager to use Integrated Product Teams, and he led the 
engineering and integration that allowed the individually developed 
weapon, sensor, and battle management, command, control and 
communications components of the NMD system to function as an 
integrated network. This integrated approach would later become the 
foundation of the BMDS engineering process.
  In 1997, Mr. Englander was selected to be NMD deputy for system 
integration and entered the Senior Executive Service, where he pursued 
a capability-based approach to missile defense requirements, 
identifying necessary system engineering changes, and leading the team 
to implement those changes. The result was an evolutionary system 
engineering process to design, develop, and deliver ever-improving 
performance increments to the BMDS, which would later be renamed the 
missile defense system (MDS).
  In 2001, Mr. Englander was selected to be the MDA director of system 
engineering and integration, where he applied the engineering 
organizational skills developed during his NMD leadership tenure to 
develop and shape the Agency's engineering processes. In this role, he 
was a key advisor to the Director and received his first Presidential 
Rank Award. A firm believer in the value of engineering collaboration, 
he led the integrated MDA systems engineering team (MDSET) comprised of 
Government, Industry, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers 
and University Affiliated Research Centers (FFRDC/UARC), and systems 
engineering and technical advisory engineers and analysts who focused 
on developing, integrating, and evolving the BMDS.
  As system engineer, he established the technical objectives and goals 
for the BMDS, including both technical and operational metrics. He 
continued to shape MDA's engineering processes with his vision to 
integrate six separate engineering functions within the Agency: system 
engineering, test, modeling and simulation, targets and 
countermeasures, manufacturing and producibility, and independent 
assessment. He created and led the MDA summer study process, 
translating policy guidance into overarching objectives for missile 
defense. He continued this process for several years, making him a 
decisive voice in the development and approval of the Nation's 
ballistic missile defense development and fielding roadmaps.
  In 2003, Mr. Englander became the MDA technical director, charged 
with articulating Agency programs to the services, Congress, public, 
and international community. Late in 2004, the Secretary of Defense 
directed ``Initial Defensive Operations,'' the first implementation of 
a limited homeland missile defense, and Mr. Englander personally led 
the significant engineering effort that allowed this to deploy with a 
meaningful capability. He was integral to the design, development, and 
fielding of the GMD system on alert today in Alaska and California that 
defends our Nation against long-range missile threats from North Korea.
  In 2006, as a result of the Base Realignment and Closure, Mr. 
Englander successfully managed the migration of BMDS engineering 
functions from the National Capital Region to Huntsville, AL. Later, as 
MDA implemented a consolidated approach to the contractor workforce, he 
led the seamless transition of critical engineering niche contractor 
support efforts into a few performance-based contracts. He also 
developed and implemented a strategy for centrally managing MDA's 
FFRDC/UARC efforts to more efficiently apply National Laboratory 
subject matter expertise to critical technical challenges across the 
agency.
  Mr. Englander also played a significant role in the 2008 satellite 
shoot-down known as Operation Burnt Frost. Although analysis showed 
several BMDS elements could achieve the intercept, he reasoned the 
flexibility and adaptability of the sea-based Aegis ballistic missile 
defense system offered the least impact to the program and provided the 
best chance of success. Based on his assessment, Aegis BMD engineers 
quickly made the required hardware and software modifications, and, 
with the support of other BMDS and service assets, the Agency 
successfully executed a pinpoint intercept that potentially saved many 
lives.
  Working with NATO technical committees, Mr. Englander promoted 
analyses that led to confirmation of the importance of missile defense 
to the Alliance at the 2009 Strasbourg-Kehl Summit, where NATO heads of 
state and government supported deployment of U.S. missile defenses in 
Europe to counter the ballistic missile threat from Iran. As a result, 
the U.S. began development of a phased, adaptive approach to ballistic 
missile defense in Europe. Working with the National Security Council 
and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Mr. Englander refined 
candidate architectures and provided a variety of deployment options 
for the placement of missile defense assets, giving State Department 
and Department of Defense negotiators the required flexibility to 
conduct meaningful nation-to-nation discussions with countries such as 
the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. His 
insightful, quick-turn engineering analysis was critical in obtaining 
administration and international support of the European Phased Adapted 
Approach, which included a new weapon system concept known as Aegis 
Ashore. His work resulted in a more flexible strategy for regional 
missile defenses and saved critical national resources.
  Throughout Mr. Englander's engineering career, he maintained a close 
and supportive relationship with the ultimate end user of the systems: 
the warfighter. In 2012, he saw an opportunity to improve the technical 
interface between MDA and the combatant commands and international 
partners. He created a warfighter technical interface organization to 
serve as the single point of contact to the warfighter for all 
engineering and technical issues related to the BMDS. This organization 
was responsible for leading the exchange of BMDS technical information 
with external stakeholders and assuring BMDS operational performance is 
correctly represented in the request for analysis and request for 
information process with combatant commands.
  Mr. Englander's effective engineering leadership, which resulted in 
the unprecedented integration of the BMDS across the three services, 
did not go unnoticed at the highest levels of the Department of 
Defense. In 2015, the Department gave MDA the role of Technical 
Authority for Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) to lead all the 
system engineering for joint IAMD interoperability. Mr. Englander led 
development of a unique modeling and simulation representation of 
cross-service weapon system kill chains to help identify and implement 
multiple fixes to service weapon systems and improve interoperability 
for joint track management, combat identification, and integrated fire 
control.
  Similarly, Mr. Englander established engineering policies and 
processes for the BMD system and propagated them to the BMDS elements. 
To rapidly deliver incremental defensive capabilities to the 
warfighter, he tailored the engineering process to pace the evolving 
threat, resulting in the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)-
Patriot Missile Segment Enhancement integration, which was provided in 
response to U.S. Pacific Command's Joint Emergent Operational Need in 
the Korean area of operations. To ensure an enterprise-level solution 
to a costly and difficult technical effort, he shaped MDA's modeling 
and simulation program for ground testing. This program provided 
faithful representations of BMDS elements and components to improve 
confidence in end-to-end performance assessment.
  Mr. Englander received numerous honors over the years, including 
three Presidential Rank Awards, the American Institute of Astronautics 
and Aeronautics (AIAA) David R. Israel Award for Meritorious 
Achievement for International Ballistic Missile Defense, the National 
Defense Industry Association Outstanding Leadership Award, and the 
Secretary of Defense's Exceptional Civilian Service Award. In 2016, he 
was inducted into the Virginia Tech College of Engineering Academy of 
Excellence and the Virginia Tech Aerospace

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and Ocean Engineering Department Academy of Excellence.
  Mr. Englander's technical acumen was matched by his gift for 
leadership. He took care of his people by recognizing their potential, 
mentoring many rising engineers, and creating opportunities for them to 
grow. Mr. Englander's legacy lives on at MDA through the talented and 
capable engineering workforce he trained, the engineering national team 
he founded, and the analysis quick response team he established.
  Mr. Englander's commitment to excellence and pioneering spirit were 
critical to delivering today's proven multilayered and integrated 
missile defense system that protects the United States homeland, the 
men and women of our services stationed overseas, and our allies and 
international partners. He truly is the father of the modern-day 
missile defense system.
  The achievements of Mr. Englander were on display on April 14, 2024, 
when Iran conducted an attack on Israel with over 300 weapons, 
including ballistic missiles, land attack cruise missiles, and unmanned 
aerial vehicles. The vast majority of the drones and missiles were 
intercepted by Israel's own air defenses and warplanes and in 
coordination with U.S. forces. The U.S. Standard Missile-3 ballistic 
missile interceptor was used for first time in combat, and the Israeli 
Arrow 3 and David's Sling weapon systems were both used successfully. 
Mr. Englander's lifetime work enabled the defense of Israel and saved 
many lives. Although he is no longer with us, he helped realize 
President Ronald Reagan's dream of making missile defense a reality.
  Mr. Englander is survived by his wife Jana of Alexandria, VA; his son 
Alexander and his wife Sarah of Columbia, MD; and his sister Denise 
Englander-Kraut and her husband Bill of West Chester, PA. Mr. Englander 
was the son of Captain Felix (U.S. Navy) and Elaine Englander. I extend 
my heartfelt condolences to the entire Englander family.

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