01Operational
- 1,000+ Combat Missions
- 3,400+ Flight Hours
- USAF MQ-9 Instructor & Evaluator
Profile · 037 · Updated Jun 2026
The questions came from the Ground Control Station first.
I spent years as an MQ-9 Reaper Instructor and Evaluator, first in the U.S. Air Force, then at General Atomics, watching how crews actually make decisions under uncertainty, supervise distant machines, and stay sharp on long missions. The research, the writing, and Remote Warrior all grew directly out of that work.
Practice Areas
- 01Human Performance in Remote OperationsAttention, fatigue, workload, and crew effectiveness across long-duration remote missions.
- 02Supervisory Control of Autonomous SystemsHow operators monitor, intervene in, and trust increasingly autonomous systems.
- 03Context, Attention & Decision-MakingHow information is reconstructed, prioritized, and acted upon in dynamic environments.
- 04Training, Evaluation & ReadinessCrew qualification, performance standards, evaluation, and readiness for high-consequence operations.
Central Thesis
The aircraft was never the limiting factor.
Remote warfare revealed a simple problem: technology scaled faster than human cognition. Aircraft, sensors, networks, and automation improved rapidly, but the fundamental challenges remained human: maintaining context, supervising complex systems, managing attention, and making sound decisions under uncertainty.
The work below explores what happens when responsibility, cognition, and consequence become the true operational constraints.
Record of Service
Background, at a glance.
Five domains of practice: operational, industry, academic, writing, and community. Each is grounded in direct experience.
02Industry
- General Atomics Evaluator
03Academic
- Former Assistant Professor
04Writing
- Author
- The Reaper's Shadow
05Community
- Founder
- Remote Warrior
External Validation
Selected appearances.
Documentary Feature
Business Insider
MQ-9 operations, remote warfare, and operator experience.
Feature Interview
USA Today
Military drone operations and operator development.
Professional Discussion
AFCEA
Autonomy, supervision, and human performance.
Invited Speaker
UAS Summit & Expo
Human performance and remote operations.
Remote Warrior
Making the human side of remote operations visible.
Remote Warrior is the platform I founded for RPA crews, instructors, and the wider remote-warfare community. Writing, conversations, resources, and advocacy for the operators whose experience rarely makes it into doctrine or media in any recognizable form.
It exists to preserve practitioner knowledge that would otherwise disappear, and to make the human side of remote operations understood and improvable.
Explore the projectsWhy This Perspective
A practitioner-first lens.
Most work on autonomy begins with technology.
This work began with operational experience supervising complex systems under uncertainty. The questions emerged in missions, instruction, evaluation, and observation before they appeared in writing or research.
The result is a practitioner-first perspective on supervision, human performance, and autonomy.
Core Concepts
Three frameworks drawn from the work.
C.01Framework
Context Reconstruction Cost
The hidden cognitive burden of rebuilding understanding after interruptions, handoffs, task switching, or periods away from a system.
C.02Framework
Supervisory Control Quality
Evaluating supervision through representation, prediction, prioritization, and intervention, not merely uptime, workload, or response time.
C.03Framework
Authority Migration
In high-consequence environments, authority often migrates toward the individual holding the highest-fidelity understanding of reality, regardless of formal hierarchy.
In Practice
How the work gets applied.
OperationalW.01
Instruction & Evaluation
Instructor and Evaluator work on the MQ-9 Reaper, first in the USAF, then at General Atomics, across crew qualification, mission events, and standardization.
USAF · GA-ASI2014 to present
AcademicW.02
Teaching & Research
University instruction and applied research on human performance, supervisory control, and human-autonomy teaming, driven by questions surfaced in the squadron and on the floor.
University facultyOngoing
WritingW.03
Books, essays & analysis
Author of long-form work on remote warfare and the crews who fly it. Practitioner-grounded writing for operators, leaders, and the broader public.
IndependentOngoing
CommunityW.04
Remote Warrior
Founder of Remote Warrior, a platform and community for RPA crews, instructors, and others working at the human edge of remote operations.
FounderActive
Engagements
Who I work with.
A.01
Military & RPA units
Instruction, evaluation support, and human-performance work for squadrons, schoolhouses, and standardization shops.
A.02
Defense industry & program offices
Practitioner-grounded advisory on supervisory control, training pipelines, and human-autonomy teaming for unmanned systems.
A.03
Universities & researchers
Teaching, collaboration, and committee work on remote warfare, decision-making, and human performance.
A.04
Podcast & media hosts
Interviews on remote warfare, the human side of unmanned operations, and what the public consistently gets wrong about both.
A.05
Authors, journalists & producers
Background, technical accuracy review, and on-the-record commentary for serious work on RPA crews and remote warfare.
A.06
Operators & instructors
Mentorship, writing, and community through Remote Warrior, for the people doing the work, not just talking about it.
Inquiries