Mr. Richard Gilpin joined the Senior Executive Service in July of 2003 and is currently serving as the Director, Aircraft and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Department at the Naval Air Systems Command.  .  The department is responsible for all acquisition and in service engineering related to Air Vehicle Performance, structure, materials and sub systems for Naval Aviation.  Previous assignment as Principal Assistant, Acquisition, Planning Programming and Budget Air Warfare for the Chief of Naval Operations.  He also stood up and served as the Chief Financial Officer/Cost Management Team leader for the Naval Aviation Enterprise, a forty billion dollar concern.   Mr. Gilpin is a career engineer with the Naval Air Systems Command.  He led the development of the F/A-18 E/F as Chief Engineer and Air Vehicle Team Leader, he also initiated the development of the Electronic Attack variant of the F-18, the EA-18G as the EA-18G Program Manager.  Most recently he was the Technical Director for the E-2 Advanced Hawkeye program.   Mr. Gilpin served as systems engineer for over twenty years providing support to the F/A-18 A/B/C/D, A-12, and AFX and he also served as an airframes and structures engineer for fixed wing aircraft.  Through this tenure he has been recognized twice with Department of the Navy Superior Service Awards, and has twice been awarded the Association of Naval Aviation Edward H Heinemann Award for his contributions to Naval Aviation.  He is a NAVAIR Associate Fellow, has a Masters Degree in Systems Management from the University of Southern California and Bachelors of Science Degree Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University.

Born in Pittsburg PA and raised in Philadelphia area Mr. Gilpin currently resides in LaPlata Maryland with his wife and three daughters.