Kevin R. Dwyer
Captain, U.S. Navy Reserve (Retired) / LM Aeronautics (Retired)
Department of Defense
Subject Matter Expert: Fighter Aircraft Market
Mr. Kevin Dwyer has more than forty years of experience in aerospace, primarily related to fighter aircraft. He is retired from the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, Fort Worth, Texas, after a career of almost twenty-seven years with LM Aero and its predecessor companies. In the four years prior to his retirement, he was the Director of International Business Development for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), leading the Contractor Team activities that contributed to the signature of the F-35 Production, Sustainment and Follow-on Development MOU by the U.S. and the eight JSF Partner Nations. In this assignment he also worked closely with various USG agencies to enable future foreign military sales (FMS) of the F-35 to other international allies.
From 1991 to mid-2003, Mr. Dwyer was the program director for various international F-16 programs, including Israel and Greece. Typical contract values of these programs exceeded $1B, and they included development, production, and delivery of several hundred F-16 airplanes and associated support equipment and services. During four of these years he was the F-16 Program Deputy for Programs, coordinating all F-16 programs (20+) and closely supporting international F-16 business development pursuits.
Originally joining the General Dynamics Fort Worth Division as an Experimental Test Pilot in September of 1980, he was the Project Pilot for the F-16C Program, F-16 Night Attack, and various customer demonstrations/evaluations becoming Chief Test Pilot in 1984. In addition to associated supervisory responsibilities, he continued F-16 project test flights. Mr. Dwyer also led customer flight evaluations and performed flight demonstrations of the F-16 at the Paris and Farnborough Air Shows and the Asian Aerospace Exhibition (Singapore). From late ‘80s until early 1991, he was the A-12 Flight Test Director, forming a blended flight test team of General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas employees, and planning the flight test activities of the U.S. Navy’s A-12 Avenger II at three test sites until the cancellation of the A-12 program in January 1991.
Mr. Dwyer served on active duty in the U.S. Navy from 1968 until September 1980. Following flight training, he flew the F-8 Crusader from 1970 to 1973, including two combat deployments to Southeast Asia, aboard USS HANCOCK (CVA-19). He joined the first F-14 Tomcat squadron in 1973, making the airplane’s first operational deployment in 1974-75, on board USS ENTERPRISE (CVAN-65). He attended the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School (TPS), graduating first in his class in June 1976.
Mr. Dwyer holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the U.S. Naval Academy, Master of Science in Aeronautical Systems from the University of West Florida, and Master of Business Administration from the Texas Christian University (1986). He is a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.
