CRANE, Ind. –
A Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division (NSWC Crane) Chief Engineer received the Honor Alumni Award for 2021 from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Lucius, or Gus, Taylor graduated from Rose-Hulman as a Mechanical Engineer with a minor in Psychology and retired from the Army in 1995 as a U.S. Army Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel.
Taylor served twenty years in the Army, and more than twenty years at NSWC Crane. As a Chief Engineer, Taylor serves in a division with around 200-people devoted to weapon systems engineering for the US Navy, US Marine Corps, and US Special Operations Command. Until recently, he served frequently in Afghanistan, Europe, Africa, and other deployed locations.
Figure 1: "El Salvador 1986: Gus Taylor accompanying an El Salvadoran patrol in Chalatenango Province, El Salvador as a combat advisor in late 1986."
Taylor was one of three graduates selected to receive Rose-Hulman’s Honor Alumni Award. According to the award website, the Honor Alumni Award recognizes exceptional alumni achievement in any field, vocational and/or voluntary. Recipients are alumni who have “attained and maintained extremely high stations in their chosen fields of endeavor and in their service to society. Due to its remarkable value as the institute’s highest alumni award, it is given sparingly.”
Figure 2: "President Bill Clinton congratulates the Pentagon operations planning team for the successful Haiti Intervention, September 1994."
Taylor attributes being able to distinguish himself in the military by applying his educational background.
“I really never expected I would receive this award,” says Taylor. “My achievements were mostly due to the unusual cross-disciplinary application of my education at Rose with a Mechanical Engineering Major and Psychology Minor. Rose-Hulman immersed me in the world of high-stress problem solving. This led to my US Government service at many duty locations in foreign nations.”
Figure 3: "NSWC Crane employees Chuck Zeller, Bobby Just, and Gus Taylor are with Army Rapid Equipping Force (REF) Warfighters at Kandahar International Airport in the spring of 2003."
Taylor says he has applied his educational background from Rose-Hulman in various ways.
“My achievements are varied and unusual due to the orthogonal alignment and application of Mechanical Engineering and Psychology education at Rose to non-traditional engineering environments,” says Taylor. “In my Infantry and Special Forces assignments, I was quickly identified as a leader able to develop ‘new-starts’ in remote and hostile environments. For example, in 1994, I was selected to command the start-up of US Special Forces presence in the war on Narco-Terrorism in Colombia.”
Taylor also applied his knowledge and experience to his civilian career at NSWC Crane, where he co-founded the Mobile Technology and Repair Complex (MTRC) program. The MTRC program provides timely and responsive means to repair, modify, and enhance current capabilities of Special Operations Forces (SOF) systems and sub-systems as well as design, engineer, and fabricate new equipment to increase the lethality and survivability of SOF operators worldwide.
“Currently, the MTRC teams that my pilot team and I founded and managed are known in US Special Operations Forces as ‘Shop-in-a-Box’ or ‘MacGyver’ teams, able to do everything from mounting a machinegun on a pickup truck in a mid-eastern combat zone to establishing a sustainable micro-industry in a remote African village,” says Taylor. “[MTRC] from 2009 to the present has served to provide both military and humanitarian contributions to our deployed Special Operations Forces and their local populace counterparts. A tribute to success of MTRC is that even during the force draw-downs of 2013-2014, MTRC demand increased to meet the ever-changing needs of US Special Operations Force, their allied Partner Forces, and the local populaces.”
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Figure 5: "Gus standing by neglected solar arrays at the village center, Chamkani, Afghanistan, spring of 2010."
During his active duty Army career, Taylor had command, combat, and staff experience in Infantry, Ranger Infantry, and Special Forces units. Taylor received multiple military awards and decorations for service, achievement, and valor in combat, as well as the Legion of Merit upon retirement. He is also the CEO and Co-Founder of Burkart-Taylor LLC, a Woman Minority-Owned Business established and operated under the ethical guidance and oversight of the NSWC Crane Office of Counsel.
Prior to his role as a Chief Engineer, Taylor was a Special Operations Customer Advocate at NSWC Crane. In 1999, he started his civilian career at Crane and for nine years, was the Program Manager for the Special Operations-Peculiar Modifications (SOPMOD) Program. The SOPMOD program provided cradle-to-grave research, development, and system management of over 420 million dollars in day and night small arms aiming systems, sound suppressors, high-performance weapons parts, and advanced ammunition.
Figure 6: Gus Nov. 2016 Niamey Niger
He says mentoring younger generations has been an important aspect of his life and career.
“My greatest enduring future contribution is and will be the ongoing mentorship of young engineers and scientists through their deployments with MTRC and after their deployments. Both men and women volunteers return from their MTRC tours are forever changed for the better, with an entirely new understanding of urgent engineering design, prototyping, and limited production, while immersed in compelling, hostile, environments.”
Read more about the rest of the 2021 recipients at this link: https://www.rose-hulman.edu/alumni-and-friends/awards-and-recognition.html?utm_source=signage&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=alumni&utm_content=alumniawards
About NSWC Crane
NSWC Crane is a naval laboratory and a field activity of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) with mission areas in Expeditionary Warfare, Strategic Missions and Electronic Warfare. The warfare center is responsible for multi-domain, multi- spectral, full life cycle support of technologies and systems enhancing capability to today's Warfighter.
Join Our Team! NAVSEA employs a diverse, highly trained, educated, and skilled workforce - from students and entry level employees to experienced professionals and individuals with disabilities. We support today's sophisticated Navy and Marine Corps ships, aircraft, weapon systems and computer systems. We are continuously looking for engineers, scientists, and other STEM professionals, as well as talented business, finance, logistics and other support experts to ensure the U.S. Navy can protect and defend America. Please connect with NSWC Crane Recruiting at this site - https://navsea.recsolu.com/external/form/jmR6cUhZKZ_qD5QUqyMk8w or email us at crane_recruiting@navy.mil