The AV-8B Weapons Systems Program Office (PMA-257) appointed a new program manager during a change-of-command and retirement ceremony Aug. 10 in Hangar 201 here.
Former commander of the Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23, here, Col. Charles Gray relieved Col. Thomas Walsh, who retired from the Marine Corps after 25 years of service.
“Colonel Walsh is a fearless leader,” said Rear Adm. Donald Gaddis, the program executive officer for Tactical Aircraft, which oversees PMA-257. “He is hardworking, steadfast and intense.”
The PMA-257 program office manages the life cycle sustainment of the AV-8B Harrier Weapon System, for the Marine Corps and its allied partners the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy. The program engineers, procures, fields and sustains readiness and capability improvements for Vertical/Short TakeOff and Landing (V/STOL) attack capability.
Gaddis thanked Walsh for his service and praised him for his accomplishments as PMA-257 program manager.
“He is a Marine who simply gets things done and done quickly,” Gaddis said.
During the ceremony, Gaddis welcomed Gray into the PEO(T) fold, encouraging him to “take the lead and shape the dialogue” for the Harrier program office.
Gray, a native of Paramonga, Peru, accepted the challenge and said he has come to appreciate the “elegance of the AV-8B Harrier.”
“This capability is not enabled by millions of lines of software code nor by hundreds of man years of modeling simulation efforts” Gray said. “It is enabled by the minds, the hands, the hearts and the sweat of Marines, and these enablers will never be matched, will never be beaten — in peace or in war.”
Gray was commissioned in the Marine Corps in May 1989 upon graduation from the United States Naval Academy, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering.
He was designated a naval aviator in June 1992 and assigned to Marine Attack Training Squadron (VMAT) 203 for AV-8B Harrier training. Upon completion, he was assigned to Marine Attack Squadron (VMA) 513, Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Yuma, Ariz., deploying to Iwakuni, Japan, in November 1993.
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