May 6, 2022
Guy Thomas’s talk will describe 23 years as a Navy “SPOOK,” operating in the shadow world of highly classified surveillance operations and systems development in the US Navy and US Air Force.
Leading intelligence operations in aircraft, cruisers, and submarines, he spent nearly a year in hostile waters, and over 2,000 hours in unfriendly airspace in both USN and USAF reconnaissance aircraft. He is one of the very few officers to serve on, over and under the sea. He was also one of the Navy’s initial Space Operations Cadre, making him the first (only?) quadruple qualified officer in Navy history. These experiences, plus his years at APL after his retirement from the Navy gave him the knowledge and skills to conceive and lead the creation of S-AIS and C-SIGMA, a brief description of which ends the brief.
Guy Thomas, the instigator of satellite AIS (S-AIS) and author of C-SIGMA (Collaboration in Space for International Global Maritime Awareness,) the concept that led to and is the basis of Implementation Task #1 of the US National Space Policy of 2010, did not start that way. For the first 20 years of his professional life Guy was a Navy special intelligence officer, a “SPOOK,” operating in the shadow world of highly classified surveillance operations and systems development in the US Navy and US Air Force.
As a Navy “Spook” Guy led intelligence operations in aircraft, cruisers, and submarines, spending nearly a year in hostile waters, and over 2,000 hours in unfriendly airspace in both USN and USAF reconnaissance aircraft. He is one of the very few officers to serve in hostile areas in all three environments: on, over and under the sea. He was also one of the Navy’s first space cadre.
He led the mission systems acceptance tests of both the Navy’s EP-3E for the Pacific Fleet and then the operational evaluation of the RC-135W, Rivet Joint Block III, for the USAF. These were the first two aircraft to use computers to run their primary mission system. He is authorized to wear both USN and USAF wings at the same time, a unique honor.
Retiring from the Navy in 1988, he spent 15 years in research and development, primarily at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab before signing on with the US Coast Guard to be the U.S. Science & Technology Advisor for Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) from 2003-2012. In 2015 he was recalled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as their subject matter expert for Earth observation space systems, retiring again in 2019.
Besides his 9 personal awards in the US military, Guy received the Distinguished Career Service Award upon his retirement from federal service in 2012. In 2015 he was the Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s “Person of the Year – Industry.” The Space Foundation presented him their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021 and he has been nominated for both the Space Technology Hall of Fame and the National Medal for Technology & Innovation, the U.S.’s highest award given for science and technology.