Thomas J. McNellis was appointed Senior Manager of Advanced Programs Strategy for the Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems line of business in November 2015.  Located in Moorestown NJ, McNellis supports a cross-functional team responsible for identifying and shaping new white space markets for radar and RF systems, such as DARPA, Office of Naval Research, and MIT-Lincoln Labs.  In this role, he is responsible for partnering with the customer community to identify and propose new solutions to solve critical mission needs.

Mr. McNellis has worked over 25 years on advanced RF systems, including radar, EW and Communications and signal processing.  In his prior position, he served as Senior Programs Manager responsible for advanced technology development and demonstration for next-generation phased array radar systems.

In 1995 McNellis led a team developing a new “through-the-sensor” technology for the Navy’s premier SPY-1 radar to provide high-fidelity environmental characterization at sea. This culminated in demonstrations aboard the USS O’KANE in 1999 and the USS NORMANDY in 2000 where the Tactical Environmental Processor was validated favorably against the world’s premier weather radar, the WSR-88D NEXRAD. This program became the genies for the National Weather Radar Testbed program for which McNellis’ Lockheed team partnered with the U.S. Navy, NOAA/NSSL, the University of Oklahoma, the FAA and Basic Commerce and Industries to build the $25M phased array National Weather Radar Testbed in Norman OK. The NWRT was operated by NSSL from 2004 to 2017, advancing the state of the art in tornado detection and warning using adaptive radar scanning, and facilitated research for multi-mission phased array, and assimilation of radar data into forecast models.

A native of Waterbury, CT, McNellis received his BSEE and MSEE degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  He began his career in 1982 as a radar engineer at Texas Instruments, and came to Moorestown in 1988 where he has held a series of engineering and management assignments including Manager of Advanced Systems Engineering, and Engineering Project Manager for advanced radar programs.