Jason Goins
National Security Officer & Scientist · Washington, DC
Jason Goins Air Force career began with a foundation in the hard sciences. He earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Creighton University and a master’s degree from the Colorado School of Mines — training that shaped how he approaches problems: with rigor, skepticism, and an insistence on testable conclusions. That scientific grounding proved as useful in operational command as it did in the laboratory.
His service took him across commands and disciplines. He directed plans and programs at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, led nuclear forensics operations at Cape Canaveral, commanded missile defense missions aboard USNS Invincible, and served as a Science and Technology Team Lead with a US Army Special Missions Unit at Fort Bragg. He coordinated readiness for National Special Security Events — including a NATO summit — and supported counter-WMD policy execution in Washington. Across all of it, his value was consistent: he could operate at the technical layer or the command layer, and he knew how to move between them without losing credibility in either place.
His contributions extended beyond operations. Goins contributed to peer-reviewed research, holds a U.S. patent for a cargo ramp design issued in 2023, and his work was featured in an NPR report aired in 2017 through a Community Voices fellowship. He approaches his career the same way he approaches a problem statement — quietly, with shared credit and a bias for practical results over recognition.
Project Arc
Project Arc was Goins’s answer to a persistent institutional failure: the gap between engineers who build systems and operators who use them. He founded the initiative to embed technical teams directly alongside operational units, giving engineers real-time access to the problems they were supposed to be solving. The model was deliberate — not a liaison role, not a study group, but sustained co-location with accountability to both sides.
The results justified the approach. Project Arc reduced B-1 bomber maintenance requirements by 250 hours annually and improved RQ-4 targeting performance by 85%. Those numbers reflect something harder to measure: a shift in how two different communities — technical and operational — understood each other’s constraints. Goins designed the initiative to be replicable, and the underlying logic applies well beyond the military context in which it was built.
After the Air Force
Goins completed his Air Force service in January 2026 and is based in Washington, DC. The transition was deliberate. He spent years working at the boundary between government, science, and operations — and his civilian work reflects the same orientation. He is focused on youth mentorship, nonprofit partnerships, and impact investing, bringing operational discipline to problems that benefit from it and credibility to organizations that are building something real.
He is comfortable in rooms where the technical and the institutional have to negotiate, and he is drawn to work where clear problem statements, steady communication, and shared credit are the standard rather than the exception. Born in Colorado Springs, he carries that sensibility — practical, direct, and uninterested in credit that hasn’t been earned — into every collaboration. He is reachable at operationalthought.com.
The views expressed are the author’s own and do not constitute endorsement by the Department of War, Department of the Air Force, or the U.S. Government.