Rick Reaser is an independent consultant on spectrum, satellite navigation, space and electronics technology. He provides continuing consulting services to U.S.-CREST and a variety of other clients. In the Spring of 2021, he provided independent consulting services Cerberus Operations and Advisory Company in the performance of technical and market due diligence to assess the viability of an aviation innovation. He provided independent consulting services to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through the Aerospace Corporation with a systems engineering program assessment of the Artemis program in Spring 2020.
From 2006 to 2019, Mr. Reaser led Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems’ Spectrum Management and Electromagnetic Environmental Effects Department. He was an Air Force Officer from 1978 to 2006 when he retired as a Colonel. While in the Air Force, Reaser served in the Air Force’s Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS) Joint Program Office (JPO) twelve years across three duty tours as a satellite engineer, satellite contract manager, chief engineer, and deputy system program director. While serving as the Defense Department’s deputy director of spectrum management, he was detailed by the Deputy Secretary of Defense to the White House and the State Department as a technical advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC). In the late 1990s he was selected as U.S. spokesperson and leader of the interagency effort to prevent GPS spectrum encroachment. He helped the US and Europe obtain new international spectrum for GPS and Galileo at two World Radio Conferences (2000 and 2003). He negotiated the technical agreement between the Europe Union (EU) and the United States to share spectrum between the two systems in 2004. He led the design efforts for three new GPS civil signals L1C, L2C and L5 as well the new military signal called M-Code.
Mr. Reaser was appointed by the Secretary of Commerce in January 2009 to the Commerce Spectrum Management Federal Advisory Committee as a Special Government Employee where he served for a decade. In 2015 he was selected by the National Research Council (NRC) to serve on a Congressionally-directed committee that provided scientific, technical and management recommendations regarding Commerce Department’s telecom labs.
Mr. Reaser is currently serving on a Congressionally-directed National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) committee reviewing Federal Communications Commission order FCC 20-48, which authorized Ligado Networks LLC to operate a low-power terrestrial radio network adjacent to the Global Positioning System (GPS) frequency band.