This is an edited transcript of an oral history interview of Kent Kresa conducted by Peter J. Westwick. Kent Kresa was an engineer at Lincoln Lab, ARPA, and Northrop, and was chairman and CEO of Northrop (and then Northrop Grumman) from 1990 to 2003. Kent Kresa was born in New York city in 1938. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT, with a stint in a cooperative program at Boeing in Seattle. He stayed at MIT to obtain a master’s degree while working at AVCO in Wilmington on the dynamics of reentry vehicles. From 1961 to 1968 he worked for Lincoln Lab on reentry vehicles and missile defense, including two years on Kwajalein Island working on Project PRESS; he also returned to MIT to earn a degree as Engineer in Aeronautics and Astronautics. In 1968 he took a job at ARPA as a program manager in the strategic technology office, working on missile defense and anti-submarine warfare, and then became director of the tactical technology office, where he oversaw early efforts on stealth aircraft. In 1975 he took a job at Northrop running its research program in Hawthorne, and then managed Northrop’s Ventura division for unmanned aircraft. In 1982 he became vice president of Northrop’s aircraft group and in 1986 senior vice president for technology, development, and planning. In 1990 he became chairman and CEO of Northrop, where he oversaw its merger with Grumman and the acquisition of Litton and TRW. He retired from Northrop Grumman in 2003. [Object file name], Aerospace Oral History Project, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
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