Frank Kelley Jr., a retired U.S. Marine Corps brigadier general, has served as deputy assistant secretary for unmanned systems at the U.S. Navy since October 2015.
He is the principal adviser to the Navy’s assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition on matters related to air-, land- and sea-based unmanned platforms.
The Marine Corps commissioned Kelley as a second lieutenant after he completed the Officer Candidate School program and later underwent flight training in Pensacola, Florida, as well as electronic warfare training at Mather Air Force Base in California.
His military assignments have included time as contingency plans and tactics officer for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm; electronic warfare branch head at the Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 5; and avionics systems project officer for EA-6B.
He also held the positions of operations officer for VMAQ-1 and assistant operations officer for Marine Aircraft Group 49 before he was assigned to the Pentagon as an action officer to the Navy’s deputy assistant secretary for Expeditionary Forces Program.
Kelley then moved to the Marine Corps Systems Command as program manager for unmanned systems as well as served as military assistant to the assistant secretary for Navy RDA.
He assumed the role of program manager for training systems at MCSC in August 2007 and was reassigned as the command’s chief of staff two years later.
The service branch promoted him to the rank of brigadier general and as commander of MCSC, which he led from 2010 to 2014.
He then worked as vice commander of the Naval Air Systems Command and as director for prototyping, experimentation and transition in the Navy’s research, development, test and evaluation office.