Telling the ATEC Story The People Behind Test & Evaluation: Rosanna Guerrero

By ATEC G 3-5June 1, 2022

Rosanna Guerrero is a woman steeped in her faith. Faith in God, faith in family, and faith in the U.S Army Test and Evaluation Command’s (ATEC) vital test mission. ATEC’s sole mission is to perform rigorous testing on the weapon systems used in combat to protect the men and women who defend our country. The daughter of a courageous Army veteran who served his country for 20 years, the words “Truth in Testing” have a personal and patriotic significance for her. She became an engineer to ensure the same critical testing that brought her father safely home after every military mission will do the same for another young girl whose father has gone off to fight for his country.

As a young man, her father had dreamed of becoming a Chemical Engineer. But when the money for college wasn’t there, he enlisted in the Army instead. He continued to dream his dream out loud, and somewhere along the way, his dream became her dream and then her reality. Pursuing her father’s dream led her to accept an engineering internship in the Inter-Range Control Center at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) while majoring in electrical engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso. Unsure where she wanted to be or what exactly she wanted to do, she dabbled in different areas of engineering. She figured she would leave right after graduation but never did. After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering, she later returned to the University of Texas at El Paso and received a Master of Science in systems engineering.

Guerrero is convinced God divinely directed her path to WSMR—fifteen years later, she’s still there. She has spent the last four years in the Planning and Requirements Branch as the lead communications planner for the Range Operations Directorate. Many consider her the subject matter expert, authoritative consultant, and advisor on establishing secure communication links with WSMR’s networks and its range customers. Her leadership, customers, directors, supervisors, engineers, and technicians regularly consult her to gain her professional analysis of the most optimum courses of action to create and develop plans for modernizing the customer’s communication and information technology requirements.

Every day she masterfully handles communication details ranging from the simple to the complex and quickly and easily adapts to aggressive mission schedules to complete all necessary objectives. She works hand-in-hand with Range sponsors and tenant organizations to plan, coordinate, resource, and provide communication services and set up secure and administrative networks to successfully and securely carry out missions in various phases of completion at WSMR or off-range. A typical day for her includes arranging telephone access and then pivoting to help set up Wi-Fi connectivity.

She is also responsible for maintaining and overseeing the detailed technical knowledge of all WSMR information technologies, communication systems, and support capabilities. Over the years, she has worked on many dynamic programs—integrated air and missile defense, the advanced battle management system, Project Convergence, and Iron Dome—that have required the communications and in-depth planning services she provides to ensure messages and data are sent and received.

But the work she does isn’t done by her alone. Guerrero is grateful to work and interact with remarkable and competent teammates. She says the key to getting the job done is everyone pulling together. Nothing gets done in a fast-paced and high-risk environment like WSMR without everyone’s full participation. She believes they’re all in it together, and only together will they all succeed. Her faith in her teammates and their test mission helped pull them through the tough times when they didn’t always have the resources they needed and had to rely on each other’s ingenuity and their combined drives to succeed.

Her intellectual agility and ability to problem solve and work well under pressure earned her an On the Spot award in December 2021 for her support of Project Convergence 21 (PC21). During PC21, she coordinated communication connections and networks, and programmed and created network tunnels. Also, in 2021, she received a WSMR coin to recognize her support in establishing network connectivity for command ceremonies, town halls, TEAMS meetings, and other special events.

WSMR is not just where she’s doing her life’s work. It’s also the place she now calls home and where she met her best friend and husband of seven years, Roman, and where they are raising their two daughters, five-year-old Aurora and three-year-old Belle. It’s where she gets to work in a career field and in a job she loves. Guerrero feels blessed to be in a position to give back as much as she has received. As an Army civilian, she wants her life, her mission, and the work she does to serve a greater purpose, not just for herself, but for our nation, our citizens, and for the men and women, in uniform and out, who she proudly stands shoulder-to-shoulders with at WSMR.