Josh A. Cassada

Did You Know?

• Cassada has over 3,500 flight hours in more than 40 aircraft and flew 23 combat missions.
• Cassada graduated summa cum laude from Albion College and received a teaching award from the University of Rochester's physics and astronomy department.
• He was awarded the Defense Meritorious Service Medal and three Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals, including one with the Combat V device.

Early life and education

Josh Aaron Cassada was born on July 18, 1973, in San Diego, California, and raised in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. He graduated from Albion College in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts in physics, where he was a member of the Sigma Chi Alpha Pi Chapter Fraternity. Cassada attended the University of Rochester for graduate school, receiving a Master of Arts in 1997 and a doctorate in physics in 2000. While at the University of Rochester, he studied high-energy particle physics and conducted research at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Military career

After completing his graduate work, Cassada commissioned as a naval officer in 2000. He completed flight training in 2001 and became a P-3 Orion pilot in VP-8 at NAS Brunswick in 2002. Cassada deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, and flew in the humanitarian Operation Unified Assistance after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. In 2006, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School and served as a P-3 Orion and P-8 Poseidon test pilot at NAS Patuxent River.

Cassada served as the P-8A Airworthiness Project Officer and was a T-38 Talon and T-6 Texan instructor test pilot. In 2011, he worked for the Defense Contract Management Agency at Boeing in Seattle, Washington, overseeing operations and contracts for the P-8 Poseidon, KC-46 Pegasus, E-3 Sentry, and US Marine Corps UAV programs. Outside of the military, he founded Quantum Opus, a superconducting instrument manufacturer, with two of his classmates from Albion College.