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Celebrating 25 Years

GCN Home > 10/07/02 issue

Where are they now...

Jerry O. Tuttle

By Nancy Ferris, Special to GCN

Retired Vice Adm. Jerry Tuttle’s 47-year career has taken him from the skies over Vietnam, where he flew combat missions, to the top ranks of the Navy and its IT programs, and then to executive roles in several software and consulting companies.

After enlisting in the Navy in 1955, he became a naval aviator and landed on aircraft carriers more than 1,000 times. Moving into the command, control, communications and intelligence area, he led the development of the Joint Operations Technical System.

After a tour with the Joint Staff, he became the Navy’s director of space and electronic warfare, spearheading the Copernicus infrastructure program and the Sonata information warfare architecture. He also served as the Navy’s inspector general and the second-ranking officer of the Atlantic Fleet. His awards and medals are too numerous to list here.

Tuttle retired in 1993 and worked successively for Oracle Corp.’s government unit, ManTech International Corp. and Savantage Financial Services Inc. This year, he founded his own consulting firm, JOT Enterprises of Fairfax, Va.

Tuttle’s thoughts: “The computer has had a profound, positive effect on every aspect of our lives since Shockley invented the transistor. It is omnipresent, the Proteus of all machines, and has opened up entirely new vistas, many of which we as mere mortals could not imagine. “The computer has altered organizations, where and by whom work is done, improved productivity, and enables everybody to have access to a galactic global digital library. Everybody’s experiences and knowledge become available to all, not just the intelligentsia as in the past.

“We are on the cusp of being able to map and emulate the phenomenal parallel processing capabilities of our brain that will enable us to understand human behavior better and enhance our ability to assimilate knowledge. Computers enabled us to map the human genome, the chemistry that composes us, and will eventually permit us to know which stem cells to activate and their permutation to achieve the desired effects, for example, eliminate pain or cure diseases.

“Ever-increasing processing power will be brought to bear in the relentless and endless pursuit of perfect knowledge for which to wage immaculate warfare. We are surrounded by fantastic opportunities brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems, as the crucible of the technology age churns out one astounding product after another and ushers in the even more exciting and marvelous Age of Biotech.”

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