Photo By Robert Grabendike | James Moore, an electronics technician, receives his 60-year length-of-service award...... read more read more
'What's your proudest accomplishment?'
“I am having difficulty answering.”
James Moore stares at his desk. He’s searching through 22,000 days across seven decades for the moment that mattered most.
The answer seems impossible. Until it isn’t.
“The telemetry work on the E-2D Hawkeye,” he finally said.
In the early 2000s, the E-2D Hawkeye program encountered network issues during enhanced development testing. The Navy’s newest airborne early warning aircraft featured revolutionary radar capability, but telemetry dropouts complicated data collection. Moore wrote software that resolved the problem.
“The software I wrote smoothed out the gaps in the telemetry, made it more likely to get good information,” Moore said.
Translation: Clean data means pilots come home.
Without clean telemetry, flight test data becomes useless. Moore gave engineers what they needed.
His work became so critical to the program’s success that in 2011, he received the Captain Kenneth A. Walden Memorial Award.
On Oct. 1, Moore celebrated 60 years of federal service during a ceremony at Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division Point Mugu.
Military service shaped Moore’s life from the beginning.
Born in Fresno, California, in 1943, Moore’s childhood moved with his father’s Army assignments: the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, where his father studied Japanese; then Tokyo, where his father served as an interpreter for the occupation forces. His clearest memories come from Nevada City, about 50 miles northeast of Sacramento.
“We had built a little shed that eventually evolved into a three-bedroom compact house,” Moore said. That’s where he grew up with his mother and stepfather on property near Grass Valley.
By 1964, Vietnam owned the headlines. The draft owned young men’s futures.
“I chose to join the Navy before the Army could grab me,” Moore said.
Nine years as a communications technician maintenance Sailor taught him electronics. Remote assignments sharpened his focus.
In Adak, Alaska, distractions disappeared.
“It was pretty easy to concentrate on work since there were very few distractions,” he said.
Winter Harbor, Maine, brought different lessons.
“I spent my off hours becoming addicted to golf,” Moore said.
From Japan, Moore supported Vietnam operations, mastering the invisible infrastructure that kept the fleet connected.
In 1973, after his honorable discharge, Moore enrolled at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, to study electronics engineering. Three years into his degree, a job counselor mentioned his son, Ron Lindsay, worked at Point Mugu. Lindsay helped arrange an interview.
“I intended to work for the summer and then complete my degree,” Moore said. “But I enjoyed the work. I felt that I was contributing to the fleet.”
In July 1974, President Nixon had weeks left. Watergate was ending a presidency. Gas cost 53 cents a gallon. And Point Mugu hummed with purpose.
The constant scream of Navy jets overhead was a familiar sound. A bridge sign proudly declared: “Navy jet noise: the sound of freedom.” Moore remembers those early days differently than today.
“There was a lot more noise in those days,” he said.
The aircraft that rattled windows and vibrated through chest cavities eventually moved to China Lake.
The base lost its roar. But the mission continued.
Moore’s career spanned the shift from analog to digital.
Laptops didn’t exist in 1974. Moore worked on hybrid computers, part digital and part analog. A one-kilobyte rotating drum memory sat in his lab. Today’s phones hold millions of times more.
Moore fine-tuned Harpoon and Standoff Land Attack Missile programs. He tested Tomahawk missiles. For years, he supported and maintained the Joint Mission Planning System laboratory, ensuring the software that helped pilots plan their missions worked. He created closed-loop networks for the Aegis Combat System, an advanced air and missile defense platform developed for the U.S. Navy.
Testing became his specialty.
“We test the software, and if the test is successful,” he said, “it then makes its way to the aircraft, where it’s used.”
The early 2000s brought his return to the E-2D Hawkeye. His telemetry software became critical to the program’s success.
“This testing finds anomalies and helps to guarantee that the warfighter gets a reliable and effective product,” Moore said.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Moore would drive the 101 to Hollywood on weekends. Not for entertainment, but for technical books.
Local bookstores had closed. Hollywood still had large bookstores with engineering sections. Moore would navigate the freeway, park in crowded lots, and walk busy sidewalks past tourists and street performers, all to reach those technical manuals.
“There was also a Chinese restaurant that served really good food,” he added.
He would return to Oxnard with stacks of books, feeding both his technical hunger and his appetite.
Since 1986, he has played clarinet with the Ventura County Concert Band. Forty musicians, mostly retirees, perform four concerts a year at venues such as Ventura High School. Wednesday night practices became his rhythm off base.
Moore also joined the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. These memberships helped him maintain professional connections beyond the gates.
Moore’s career spans seven decades and 12 presidents. From analog to digital. From Vietnam to tensions rising again in the Pacific.
Come Dec. 1, Moore will retire — by his own math, about 20 years overdue.
“Yeah, it feels like I should have been out of here 20 years ago,” he said, laughing.
Between now and then, he’s keeping it simple.
“Right now, I sit around and watch episodes of ‘The Big Bang Theory,’” he said.
But when asked what kept him going all these years, Moore responded: “I was still contributing to the fleet.”
Moore pauses.
“I’ve had a good career,” he said.
| Date Taken: | 11.17.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 11.17.2025 11:57 |
| Story ID: | 551359 |
| Location: | POINT MUGU NAWC, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Hometown: | FRESNO, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 44 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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