REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. (Sept. 23, 2024) – Christina Blankenship has dedicated her career to propulsion research and development. But that has an even more personal meaning now that she is the mother of a Soldier.
Blankenship recently received the Innovative Researcher Award during the North Alabama Chapter of Federally Employed Women’s annual Redstone Women Rock awards for her accomplished career, which includes three personal patents and 14 publications that have contributed to and benefitted the collective knowledge of the kinetic weapons community.
Today Blankenship serves as Chief for the Weapons Analysis and Evaluation Division under the Technology Development Directorate at the DEVCOM Aviation & Missile Center, but she is a long-time member of the team, beginning her career in 2001 as a mechanical and aerospace engineering co-op student from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Much has changed since those early days, she said, but the propulsion lab’s overarching mission has remained the same. It’s a common misconception that civil service is mostly limited to program management – with hands-on work the responsibility of the military’s industry partners. That is not the case in the propulsion lab, and it is one of the main reasons Blankenship said she has made her career with the Center.
“I always wanted to work in a lab but when I imagined it, I thought of a chemistry lab with people in white lab coats and microscopes. And there's some people around here who do that. But here, it's more in the grass and in the field -- hands-on, putting things together and taking them apart.”
While the day-to-day work might not have changed drastically over the years, Blankenship said that top-level communication is one place that the job is different and that her younger and newer employees today have a better idea of where their work fits into the larger picture.
“When I was a co-op or even initially working on testing, I'd get some widget we'd have to test and I would be like, ‘What is that? What am I doing this for? Who is it for?’ There's more clarity in the lower levels now that they actually know what their impact is on the Army as a whole.”
Along with her career growth from intern to leader, Blankenship’s family has also grown during her time at the Center. She is mom to three boys, with her oldest son serving in the Army – and operating some of the same systems that Blankenship helped support.
“My son has been in the Army for six years and we are very proud of him,” she shared. “Last year he went off to training where he was shooting Hellfire missiles. I told him, ‘Well, I worked on that.’ I feel that really tied it to me and that he is hands-on using what we have worked on in this building.
“It brings it all full circle.”
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As part of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, a subordinate of the U.S. Army Futures Command, DEVCOM Aviation & Missile Center serves as the Army’s primary center for developing, integrating, demonstrating and sustaining Army aviation and missile systems. For more than six decades, DEVCOM AvMC has delivered cutting-edge aviation and missile technologies and it continues to drive the advancement of future capabilities to ensure war-winning future readiness and battlefield dominance.
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