Ross Blankinship Joins MZA
2012-12-31 17:03:56
MZA is delighted that Mr. Ross Blankinship, a long-time contributor to the development of line-of-sight stabilization and adaptive optics systems for High Energy Lasers (HEL) systems, has joined the MZA technical staff. With a B. S. degree in Astronautical Engineering from the Air Force Academy, Mr. Blankinship has 38 years of experience in control system design and analysis.

In the Air Force he analyzed inertial navigation systems at the Central Inertial Guidance Test Facility at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. In sixteen years at Lockheed Martin, he was lead controls engineer for several BMDO and SDIO programs responsible for design and analysis of wavefront and jitter control systems. As a member of the team composed of Lockheed, Honeywell, and CSA Engineering he designed the structural control system for the Space Integrated Controls Experiment (SPICE) at the Phillips Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. He designed and analyzed the beam and isolation control systems in the concept development phase of the Airborne Laser program. His effort in the Alpha-Lamp Integration program was key to successful demonstration of closed-loop control of a high-energy laser beam at the TRW Capistrano Test Site, California. In 14 years at CSA, and then Moog-CSA after Moog acquired CSA, he continued to provide support to the ABL program in control system design, modeling, simulation, and test, culminating in successful missile shootdown.

Mr. Blankinship's arrival significantly bolsters MZA's control system design and implementation capabilities.