High-flying career: UW-Stout alum’s work with Lockheed-Martin takes him into rarified air

Menomonie, Wis. — Barry Bauer remembers the moment early in his career with aerospace giant Lockheed-Martin when his team’s four-year project was put to the test. They had been tasked with designing and developing leading edges of the Air Force F-22 fighter aircraft that would avoid radar detection.

When an F-22 vertical stabilizer was mounted on a pole for a radar range test, nothing came back. Only when a bird landed on the stabilizer during the test — something that wouldn’t happen on a plane going 1,500 mph — was a stabilizer detected.

The work was a success, one of the reasons the F-22 became a stealth jet in the U.S. arsenal.

The F-22 project is one of many successes in Bauer’s 36-year career as a project manager with Lockheed-Martin after earning degrees from University of Wisconsin-Stout in 1983 and 1992.

The Menomonie resident has contributed to national defense success in other ways. His team’s F-22 design remains in use on the state-of-the art F-35 made by Lockheed-Martin. On the F-35, he managed the integrated core processor project for the plane’s onboard computer. He led the merger of IT systems when Lockheed-Martin Space and Boeing Defense formed United Launch Alliance. He has worked on projects for the F-16, F-117 and other military aircraft.

“When a plane flies, there’s an army of people you never see working behind the scenes to make it all happen,” Bauer said. “It’s all in the interest of national security. I’m motivated: Some of the threats out there are pretty sobering.”

Sobering also at times for Bauer is the realization that he has managed projects that “have some of the smartest people on the planet” on them, he said.

He led the design team that earlier this year received the Engineers’ Council Distinguished Engineering Project Achievement Award for Lockheed-Martin’s Hypersonic Reference Vehicle Application. It was developed to support the U.S. Department of Defense-funded University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics — UCAH — involving 119 universities, 214 partners and 2,700 people, funded at $100 million over five years.

To enable UCAH, Bauer’s team developed a hypersonic reference vehicle, a software modeling tool that could help shape the next generation of hypersonic flight vehicles, or those flying faster than five times the speed of sound.

As a country, “We were behind in hypersonic technology so we began to harness the power of universities to do research and then transition results to industry,” said Bauer, who collaborated with defense leaders and the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He also has worked as an adjunct professor for 16 years at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, teaching project and business management.

Bauer isn’t a pilot, but aeronautics and going fast seem to be in his blood. After high school, he was an aircraft hydraulics and pneumatics technician on the F-4 and other planes for six years in the Marine Corps. He memorized the planes’ operating systems, one reason he was chosen to land on the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier with a pilot to fix an F-4’s landing gear.

He soon realized the big difference between himself and the military pilots and others whose careers were really going places — they had a college education.

After serving, Bauer earned an industrial technology degree at UW-Stout. He ran cross country and qualified for nationals; after graduating he competed at a high level for many years in marathons and other races. He returned to campus for a master’s in safety and risk and eventually earned two other master’s degrees and a doctorate.

Diplomas in hand, the Durand native began to pursue his true passion, aerospace, landing at Hughes Aircraft before Lockheed-Martin. “My goal has always been to master the job and get ready for the next one. It’s been an amazing journey of discovery,” he said.

UW-Stout is Wisconsin’s Polytechnic University, with a focus on applied learning, collaboration with business and industry, and career outcomes. Learn more via the FOCUS2030 strategic plan.