Brock Strom (born September 21, 1934) is a former

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

player, Air Force officer, and engineer. Rhodes scholar. Head of engineering for NAVSTAR GPS satellite program at USAF Space & Missile Systems Organization (SAMSO) precursor to Space Command and Space Force.

Biography

Strom was born in

Munising, Michigan Munising ( ') is a city in Alger County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 2,355 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Alger County. The city is partially surrounded by Munising Township, but the two are administered auton ...

. Strom was a member of the first graduating class of the

United States Air Force Academy The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) is a United States service academy in El Paso County, Colorado, immediately north of Colorado Springs. It educates cadets for service in the officer corps of the United States Air Force and U ...

(USAFA) in 1959. He was captain of the undefeated 1958 football team, and became the Academy's first All-American. He gained the honor when players played offense and defense and just 11 were selected. Strom played tackle on the offensive and defensive lines. He earned an M.S. from MIT in 1961, and a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in 1971. He flew 90 missions as a navigator in Vietnam, and was decorated with two Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Bronze Stars, and three Air Medals. As a lieutenant colonel, he became Director of Engineering in the

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

Joint Program Office. After retiring from the Air Force as a colonel, he joined Burlington Northern Railroad as the director of the Advanced Railroad Electronics System (ARES), which used GPS for

positive train control Positive train control (PTC) is a family of automatic train protection systems deployed in the United States. Most of the United States' national rail network mileage has a form of PTC. These systems are generally designed to check that trains a ...

. He became Vice President, Information Systems Services, Burlington Northern Railroad in April 1988.

References

External links

* 1934 births Living people American football tackles Air Force Falcons football players All-American college football players College Football Hall of Fame inductees People from Munising, Michigan Players of American football from Michigan Military personnel from Michigan {{collegefootball-player-stub