Distinguished Engineer
Hometown: Tabor
Electrical Engineering,
Adolph Fejfar retired in 2018 after a career of more than 50 years in ground and aviation systems, becoming the international expert on a synchronous military communication system now used by 48 countries.
He worked full time with the federally funded research firm MITRE from 1966 to 2000 and was a consultant on Link 16 for 18 years. Link 16 is a complicated and encrypted system that allows communication between military platforms. For 13 years (1987-2000), he was the MITRE site leader responsible for testing the new digital, tactical, synchronous Link 16 communications system.
Link 16 was just being developed when Fejfar got involved. By 2010, Link 16 had become so widespread that international user conferences were held and Fejfar served as a side-session co-chair for several years.
After graduating from South Dakota State University, Fejfar was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, which sent him to work on radar equipment in California in 1960. After a medical discharge, he continued his electrical engineering education at Stanford in 1963.