Growing up on a small cotton farm in Blountsville, Ala., Wendell Mead was the first in his family to graduate from high school and the first to attend college. He credits a few high school teachers, and in particular, principal J.B. Pennington, for getting him there.

“It was common in those days for boys to take a day off school to work on the farm,” said Mead. “I was plowing the field one day and looked up to see a man dressed in a uniform coming across the field. He was a Navy recruiter Pennington sent to see me.”

Mead decided to enlist, until he learned that the recently established National Defense Education Act of 1958 would provide money for him to attend college in certain disciplines. Pennington arranged for Mead to take the tests that would determine his eligibility, and his math teacher suggested he study engineering. Mead replied with the age-old question, “What do engineers do?”

With an interest in airplanes — but never dreaming he would go on to spend his career with rockets and missiles — Mead enrolled in the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (API) in 1959 in aeronautical engineering. A year later, API would become Auburn University and with the advent of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), his major would change its name to aerospace engineering. When not in class or working his job at a local gas station, Mead was conducting research and learning from the likes of professors Fred Martin and Bill Sherling, both icons of Auburn’s aerospace program.

Mead graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1963 and went to work for NASA during the early days of space exploration at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. Due to the demand for engineers with advanced degrees, NASA sent him back to Auburn on scholarship to obtain a master’s degree in aerospace engineering, which he completed in 1966.

Mead would go on to work for Lockheed in Huntsville, and later for the U.S. Army when it initiated the Safeguard Missile Defense Program. The Army nominated him for the prestigious Sloan Fellows Program and he completed a master’s of management from Stanford University in 1978. After leading the Huntsville office of California-based SRS Technologies, Mead ventured out on his own and in 1990 started AGRI, Inc. – a company he continues to oversee. Today, AGRI does business under the name Serendipity Sciences, namely because Mead’s experiences have taught him that many of the things we know, we discovered while we were looking for something else.

A Genesis

A Standard Missile-3 is launched from the USS Hopper during a Missile Defense Agency test in order to intercept a short-range ballistic missile target launched a few minutes earlier from the Pacific Missile Range facility at Barking Sands in Kauai, Hawaii.

In 1977, the Army placed Mead in charge of a feasibility study to determine if it was possible to accurately guide a missile in order to intercept another missile. The study indicated that it was indeed possible; and thus began Mead’s relentless pursuit of a simulation model that could assimilate data in order to create a wide variety of end-to-end ballistic missile defense scenarios and strategies.

Known today as BMD TRADES, easier to articulate than its more formal name, Ballistic Missile Defense Technical Requirements Assessment & Design Evaluation Simulation, the model is used as extensively by the Missile Defense Agency as it was by its Department of Defense predecessors. It is widely accepted as a highly reliable simulation that enables war fighters, systems engineers and policy makers to quickly and accurately run and analyze complex missile defense scenarios. BMD TRADES has been tested in the Pacific Missile Range, Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands and Kodiak Island in Alaska.

Mead’s proprietary simulation takes into account engineering and physics equations, as well as information such as the type of missile, its trajectory and data from radar, sensors and satellites to determine the best collision point at which to intercept a missile. Translated, that means when a missile is first detected, this model can adeptly assess its trajectory and determine precise interception points.

“By designing and testing scenarios, we can create battle maps,” said Mead. “We look at potential threat locations and run scenarios with similar parameters. We have developed a database of more than 39,000 potential attack scenarios that are highly representative of real-world possibilities.”

As he told a general officer during a briefing in 2002, “If you can think it, we can simulate it. There is not much you can do with a threatening missile that we can’t imitate.”

A quiet, unassuming man, Mead understands the gravity of his work. “Missile-to-missile defense is so important to our safety,” he notes. “While it is not without risks, it can destroy a missile with less collateral damage.”

Mead’s extensive experience, along with the model’s success, has earned him a fair measure of recognition. He currently serves on a 16-member committee of the prestigious National Academy of Science commissioned to study ballistic missile defense in order to make recommendations to Congress on all elements of the nation’s BMD program. The committee is utilizing Mead’s model as a cornerstone of the study.

A New Iteration

Mead

In March of this year, Mead took another step in the evolution of BMD TRADES by donating the simulation software, as well as its crucial source code, to Auburn’s Department of Aerospace Engineering – a gift with a commercial value of $5 million.

"I see this as an opportunity to collaborate with faculty and give Auburn students a hands-on training tool,” said Mead. “We can take this technology and continue to make improvements with the help of faculty and graduate students. Auburn can keep the simulation at the forefront of modern technology, while also gaining valuable research experience"

While the source code will be closely monitored, Auburn Engineering has unlimited rights on the model’s use.

"This simulation software will provide extremely valuable experience to our students," said John Cochran, department head of aerospace engineering. "Many government agencies and contractors are interested in hiring aerospace engineering graduates with knowledge in this specialized area. We are grateful to Wendell for sharing the simulation with us, and for the confidence he has in our faculty and students to continue to develop and refine it."

"The model has the potential to benefit Auburn in terms of research opportunities and dollars," said Mead. "And from a selfish point of view, as I have spent the better part of my career focused on this project, I would like to see it remain viable and useful to the defense of our nation for a long time."

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