A Senior Advisor at Crest Hill, Ken Turner is a trained engineer and telecom policy expert who spent more than 30 years working on spectrum matters for the US government, first for the United States Air Force and then for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He left government in 2021 after thirty-seven years of service.
Ken began his federal government career at Wright Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) as an electronics engineer working on communications, navigation, and identification (CNI) capabilities for aircraft systems. Among many other programs, he worked in the on the F-15 and F-22 programs, where he became the lead Electronic Warfare aperture engineer. In 1994, Ken was assigned to an intelligence position with the Air Force at the Pentagon working on the development and deployment of satellite systems – including the architecture and command and control of these systems and data dissemination from these systems.
This work led to Ken’s involvement in the interagency domestic spectrum policy process on behalf of DoD and in the ITU radio communication sector. He was a delegate to and special advisor for both WRC-95 and WRC-97. In this role, he was directly involved in several key ITU satellite international deliberations that paved the way for future satellite spectrum sharing studies and regulations being adopted on a global basis.
In 1998, Ken was detailed to the Office of the Assistant of Defense for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (OASD C3I). Several years later he formally joined OASD C3I as a senior policy analyst. He remained on the staff as the office was reorganized to become Office of the DoD Chief Information Officer. As a key senior policy analyst in the CIO’s office, Ken was involved in DoD, US, and NATO spectrum policy development for space communications and navigation, overhead reconnaissance, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), counter UAS, electronic warfare, radar, datalink, and other critical military systems. He served on U.S. WRC delegations from 2000 through 2019 and was deeply involved in the development of key U.S. ITU positions.