Curriculum Vitae

Director, Maritime Domain Awareness, Naval Forces Europe and AfricaMr. Bates leads a well regarded cross-functional effort across the staff that has implemented a comprehensive and coherent plan to address Maritime Domain Awareness. Specifically, the notion of levels of awareness which synchronize the mission to a specified degree of awareness have been implemented along with other internal processes like MDA training, qualifications, standard operating procedures, quality assurance and improved linkage with Intel capabilities which has resulted in significant increases in accuracy, timeliness and completeness of vessel tracks. Mr. Bates also guides MDA theater security cooperation and has put in place a process to baseline investments, track status, coordinate interoperability of new installations with existing systems, field an unclassified data sharing system (to include commercial space) and using reserve support ("MDA battalion") to increase country interaction. He has leveraged S&T opportunities (e.g. JCTDs and emerging technologies like CAMTES), focusing analysis to support investment recommendations.
Before being assigned to NAVEUR/NAVAF/C6F, Mr. Bates worked in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations for almost ten years and was the Head, Integration, Interoperability and Transformation Branch, Warfare Integration; Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Communication Networks where among other activities in his portfolio he was instrumental in the fielding of Maritime Domain Awareness Spiral 1, a key initiative of the Secretary of the Navy.
His strong educational background includes an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) and completing doctoral programs in both Educational Administration and Business Administration. He is the author of several refereed publications, presenting papers at leading conferences on the organizational challenges of implementing network centric strategies.
After serving nine years as a Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Navy, he was instrumental in the integration of a revolutionary signal processing and tracking system within the Navy's Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS) and subsequently integrating a secure Wide Areas Network into IUSS ship and shore systems, spearheading the Navy's evolution to network centric Undersea Warfare. He was a principal systems engineer at Raytheon (originally Hughes) for several projects including the Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR) which is part of the National Missile Defense program; the winning proposal ($3.6B) for the next generation of Navy ships; and a state of the art RF communications network for rangeless air to air combat training. He has directed and supported the activities of numerous large-scale software installation, test and integration activities at sites around the world. Mr. Bates is a former member of the research faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School.