20 Years of RCG Inc. How many veteran-owned small business achieve this? From a high-risk "company of one" - doing some consulting on the side, to a conus-wide, distributed software development company providing cognitive systems engineering (CSE) as a service, it's been a fruitful journey that could never have been predicted. I had the privilege to celebrate the 20-year milestone with most of the company and their spouses this past weekend, and the outcome was fantastic!

Have you ever heard of a "Hackathon"? They are actually healthy events! Despite the legacy "hacker" reference, its an excellent opportunity for a distributed company like RCG to get software folks together who may have never met for some good old fashioned human interaction and relaxation - which is a great recipe for innovation!

I learned a few years ago that humans can rarely be creative and productive at the same time, and that relaxation begets creativity. So what better way than to get a group of talented, motivated individuals together in a relaxed setting, kick the shoes off, and solve some complex software issues? Great job by Steve and Marty to find the house and schedule the event and make it a huge success. I could not be more proud of the RCG software engineering team in these photos.

It's been a little while since I proudly posted the awesome progress of our company, but there has been plenty afoot! Fresh off signing a multi-year software development deal for SPEAR as a result of Cubic's faith in RCG (that includes soup to nuts requirements development, cognitive systems engineering, software engineering, test, verification and cyber validation ready for deployment), I am pleased to announce that SPEAR this year has ran exercise Red Flag for the second time, exercise Checkered Flag (3 years running), the UK's exercise Cobra Warrior (2 years running), and is part of the USAF Weapons School F-35 syllabus. Warfighters keep pulling for this capability! Additionally, the UK MOD is using SPEAR to host exercise Atlantic Trident with many NATO countries including USAFE participants at Lakenheath, and INDOPACOM/PMTEC has selected SPEAR for exercise Valiant Shield which we all know is a supremely important and high visibility tool for the National Command Authority in the Pacific region. The geographic importance and visibility of these two events cannot be overstated.

If that wasn't enough, I am currently traveling back from Sierra Nevada Corp (SNC) where I participated this morning with RCG employees Geoffrey Franks and Josh Walker as a teammate with SNC and Cubic in a demonstration to Gen Wilsbach and Gen Hecker in a Battle Management scenario utilizing the world leading data management capabilities of SNC with the data analyzation and visualization capabilities of SPEAR. Consider that Warfighters across the world are demanding SPEAR in a training capacity both in live as well as the simulator environment - and now we are branching out to theater battle management. This would not be possible with ANY legacy system, and our foundation of a common data model coupled with bespoke analytics and displays based on the task at hand literally has no bounds. I could not be more proud of the RCG team!

RCG and SPEAR (https://lnkd.in/eZJKQNN3) are growing at Nellis AFB! In just the nick of time, USAF-owned hardware was delivered to Nellis AFB and our team is busy setting up 55 new clients at the 414th CTS (Red Flag) and the 6th WPS (F-35 Weapons School) to support Red Flag 23-3 and the fall WIC class. RCG develops requirements for and creates and validates all of the SPEAR code, and cyber certifies continuous updates to SPEAR for Cubic.

The momentum at Nellis AFB as well as in the UK, Australia, and many other countries foster continued growth in our company - and we are looking for 5th Generation/Multi-Domain SME expertise as well as cleared/eligible sysadmin, networking, secdevops, and QA folks. It's an exciting time and a great opportunity to get on board with a program that is growing worldwide.

Take a look at our website rcginc-us.com and contact us if you are looking to lead the next generation of CSE based war fighting, battle management, training, testing, and more!

I am pleased to announce another fantastic milestone for RCG, Cubic, and SPEAR software (cubic.com/spear).

Last week, RCG & Cubic concluded an Operational, Multi-Domain Assessment of the SPEAR software, led by the USAF Warfare Center at the behest of HAF/A3 and ACC/A589 utilizing an AF-wide Certificate to Field (CTF) validating the cyber certifications of our work. We await the final report from the Air Force and the benefit to warfighters in multiple domains, and look forward to enabling many new capabilities that the software brings.

A thousand thanks to the outstanding leadership from (in RCG) Tod "Popeye" Fingal and Geoffrey "El Gato" Franks leading Nellis Red Flag and USAF Weapons School integration, as well as Tim "Gopher" Welde, Jon "Press" Wheeler, and Paul "Pk" Averna from Cubic who helped make this effort a success. We are just getting warmed up!

"Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people"

- Steve Jobs.

This week, a team of people at RCG were recognized in a significant way, providing outstanding support to Raytheon Technologies. I could not be more proud! I would like to specifically call out the efforts of Todd "Popeye" Fingal, Dr. Martin Voshell, Chris "K-Rush" Hubbard, and Geoffrey "El Gato" Franks for their exemplary skill and results on an important program for national security. Well done team!

"Raytheon Technologies has recognized Rickard Consulting Group, Inc. with a Premier Award for performance in 2021 and overall excellence in Technology & Innovation. The Premier Award is an annual recognition platform under the Raytheon Technologies Performance+ Program to recognize suppliers with superior performance and that have provided exceptional value to Raytheon Technologies in one of the four key categories: Cost Competitiveness, Technology & Innovation, Business Management/Customer Service and Collaboration."

Proud to announce another software development customer today - Lockheed Martin! I'm proud of my dev team and the work they do. Where else could you work on Wireless Network control software, a multi-domain software system, and solutions for a major Defense contractor in the same day? RCG is where!