Joseph W. Pope Commander United State Navy

Commander Joseph Pope, United States Navy, is currently serving as the Operations Analysis and Assessments Branch Chief within the United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) Operations Directorate. In this capacity he has been serving as the USTRANSCOM liaison for the COVID-19 aerosol testing effort. His operational experience is as a helicopter pilot in the MH-53E aircraft focusing on mine countermeasures operations, with three deployments to the western Pacific. CDR Pope also served as a developmental test pilot, working primarily on MH-60S airborne mine countermeasures systems to include the AN/ASQ-235 Airborne Mine Neutralization System and the AN/AES-1 Airborne Laser Mine Detection System.

CDR Pope holds a bachelors of Science in Physics (2005) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Masters of Science in Engineering Sciences—Aeronautical Engineering (2014) from the Naval Postgraduate School. He is also a graduate of the United States Naval Test Pilot School (Class 141) completing the Rotary Wing Engineering Test Pilot curriculum. CDR Pope has accumulated over 1,700 flight hours in 27 different Type/Model/Series of rotary wing and fixed wing aircraft.