Distinguished Engineer
Hometown: Ramona
Electrical Engineering,
Wally Hoff grew up on a farm near Ramona. After completing his B.S. in electrical engineering in 1960, he began a 42 year career in defense electronics as a junior design engineer with Westinghouse Defense. He completed his M.S. at the University of Maryland in 1971 and was selected by Westinghouse as one of two engineers in the company to receive the Lamme Scholarship in 1972. He chose to attend Cambridge University in England where he completed a year of post graduate work in digital signal processing receiving a Certificate of Advance Study in engineering before returning to Baltimore in 1973. He progressed through management to vice president and general manager of Aerospace Systems. In 1996, Northrop Grumman acquired Westinghouse/Northrop Grumman was primarily in the area of technology development, and application of that technology in systems such as radar, EO, electrical warfare and C3 systems. Some of the major systems he participated in were AWACS radar, B-I radar, F-16 radar, F-22 radar, F-35 radar, Longbow radar, ALQ-131 (EW), ASPJ (EW), F-35 DAS (EO) and several space based sensor systems. Following retirement in 2002, Wally served on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board for a four year term. He participated in technical reviews of several U.S. Air Force Laboratories and worked on various studies projecting essential long range Air Force capabilities required to counter future threats.