July 3 marked 40 years of federal service for Scott O’Neil, Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division’s executive director and senior civilian.
When O’Neil arrived at China Lake in 1972 as a junior professional, his goal was to become a branch head. Although he never actually worked as a branch head, most would say he more than surpassed his goal.
Originally from Bremerton, Wash., O’Neil had two job offers when he graduated from Seattle University with a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering. He had to decide between a company in Colorado and the Navy in China Lake.
“I could have gone to that company and packaged electronics in a plastic box, or come here to build rockets,” O’Neil said. “It was an easy choice.
“When I got here, the reputation of this organization was phenomenal,” he said. “I really liked being part of a well-recognized and respected organization. Today, we’re still one of the Navy’s premiere labs.”
Like most people, his arrival in the high desert was unforgettable. O’Neil remembers leaving Seattle at 6 a.m. – 68 degrees and raining – and arriving in Inyokern at noon – 114 degrees. Until then, he never thought he’d live anywhere that didn’t have trees but he was immediately hooked on the work at China Lake, and Ridgecrest quickly became his home.
Looking back, O’Neil said one of the keys to his success in the challenging world of government defense work has been patience. He recalled the early seventies as a young engineer when he was doing hands-on work with thrust vector control systems, movable nozzles and looking at other ways to steer a weapon.
“It was all new and different technology, and we had a hard time trying to get it accepted,” he remembered. “Today, you look at the weapons and mostly all of them have thrust vectoring. We developed and enabled a lot of that and it’s had a huge impact on how our weapons are configured today.”
O’Neil also contributed firsthand to building new fuzes and titanium warheads for the Tomahawk cruise missile.
“Every time I see a Tomahawk strike, I realize that’s a direct contribution to our warfighting capability that came right out of NAWCWD,” he said. “Being part of that was fun, exciting work.”
O’Neil said he is still having fun now but in a different way. He continues to engineer but it’s more social and organizational engineering these days.
“It’s exciting to me to help create a common vision for the future,” he said. “It’s all about relationships, relationships, relationships – building them and sustaining them so we can all work together to produce capabilities, not just t
