Jay Dryer Director, Strategic Capabilities Office Department of Defense

Mr. Jay Dryer is the Director of the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO), whose mission is to develop new and innovative ways to shape and counter emerging threats across all domains, bringing unexpected and game-changing capabilities to create strategic operational effects.

Prior to directing SCO, Mr. Dryer was Deputy Associate Administrator for Programs at NASA Aeronautics Mission Directorate (ARMD). He was responsible for translating ARMD’s research portfolio requirements and program balance into specific, actionable programs. He was also responsible for integrating the programs with an eye to risk management and implementing best practices across the programs, as well as overseeing and tracking inter-program requirements changes and their impact to the budget.

Previously as Director of the Advanced Air Vehicles Program, Dryer was responsible for the overall planning, management and evaluation of the directorate’s efforts to develop tools, technologies, and concepts that enable new generations of civil aircraft that are safer, more energy efficient, and have a smaller environmental footprint. The program worked to achieve major leaps in the performance of subsonic fixed and rotary wing aircraft to meet growing long-term civil aviation needs, in the concept of low-boom supersonic flight, and in sustaining hypersonic competency for national needs.

Prior to that, he supported the ARMD associate administrator in a broad range of mission directorate activities, including strategic and program planning; budget development; program review and evaluation; and external coordination. He also served as Director of the former Fundamental Aeronautics Program Office, and as Senior Technical Advisor for ARMD, which involved oversight of all ARMD programs and projects in terms of architecture, requirements and budgets, technical reviews and research activities. He also managed the directorate’s extensive NASA Research Announcement process.

Before joining NASA, Dryer worked with Arion Systems and SRA International providing technical support to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). His work included research in rotorcraft for the DARPA Helicopter Quieting Program, which included significant planning for the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge program, an innovative autonomous vehicle race in the desert.

During the 1990s, Dryer served in the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Submarine Force, the Deep Submergence Unit, and Development Squadron Five, specializing in development and operation of unmanned aerial and submersible vehicles. He directed the unmanned submersible vehicle that located the wreck of the U.S.S. Yorktown from World War II, and he also commanded the last survey missions to the sites of the lost U.S.S Thresher and U.S.S Scorpio submarines in 1998.

Dryer holds a Bachelor of Science degree in systems engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Master’s of Science degree in ocean engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.