The Department of the Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System Program Office (PMA-268) welcomed a new leader during a change of command ceremony here Oct. 17 where Navy Capt. Beau Duarte replaced Capt. Jaime Engdahl as PMA-268’s program manager.

More than 300 guests attended the ceremony at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23 hangar.

Keynote speaker Rear Adm. Mat Winter, program executive officer for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons (PEO(U&W)), which oversees PMA-268, commended Engdahl’s leadership and the UCAS-D team thanking them for their contributions to naval aviation history. “When you do things that are truly history making, never been done before in the history mankind, it gets people’s attention … and that’s not being melodramatic,” Winter said.

Monikers such as ‘first ever,’ ‘worlds’ best,’ ‘history making’ become commonplace and you sit there and say, how can that be when we’re talking about software and pieces of metal in the sky – that’s not history making,” he said. “We do that. We’ve done that. It’s not trivial and we continue to celebrate naval aviation … [And this team] took the art of the possible and made it the science of reality.”

Winter also recognized the superlative efforts of his outgoing and incoming program managers. “We are ushering out arguably one of my best program managers and ushering in an equally excellent program manager,” Winter said. “The first time I met Jaime (Engdahl), he was focused on the people and the mission and, as we all know, the right people in the right job can make the mission much more successful. His ability to engage and set the course of the Unmanned Combat Air System program office is unmatched.”

Duarte, who previously served as Naval Air Systems Command’s (NAVAIR) deputy program manager for Spectrum Dominance for the F/A-18 and EA-18G Program Office, is no stranger to the unmanned aircraft community. “Fourteen years ago this month, at the then Naval Strike Aircraft Test Squadron now known as VX-23, I replaced Lt. Engdahl as UAV project officer developing aircraft and technologies for the Navy’s nascent unmanned fleet,” Duarte said. “At that time, our flight test workhorse was the BQM-147A Exdrone, a 90-pound fiberglass propeller-driven flying wing with a six-foot wingspan and a two-stroke gas motor outputting out a whopping 9 horsepower. Contrast that with today&rsqu