Mitch Kugler is Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Missile Defense Systems division of The Boeing Company and is responsible for leading the execution of Boeing's missile defense activities in the NATO countries. His initial position at Boeing was as the Director of Strategic Planning for the Missile Defense Systems division.
Mr. Kugler joined Boeing in January 2002 after working for 10 years for Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, currently the chairman of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Appropriations.
From 1997 until departing the Senate, Mr. Kugler was the Republican Staff Director of the Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services of the United States Senate's Committee on Governmental Affairs. The Subcommittee focused principally on issues related to ballistic missile defense programs and policy, strategic deterrence, arms control, export controls, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems.
Prior to that Mr. Kugler was Legislative Director for Senator Cochran. In this position his primary legislative responsibility was on national security issues, with a particular emphasis on ballistic missile defense programs and policy and arms control. Mr. Kugler began working for Senator Cochran in 1992 as Assistant Staff Director of the Senate Republican Conference.
Mr. Kugler drafted the National Missile Defense Act of 1999 (Public Law 106-38), which makes it the policy of the United States to deploy a National Missile Defense system when the technology to do so is ready. He also helped draft The Proliferation Primer, a 1998 report by the Subcommittee on International Security and Proliferation, and Senator Cochran's September 2000 report, Stubborn Things: a Decade of Facts about Ballistic Missile Defense. He was also the principal editor for both of these reports. Mr. Kugler helped plan, organize, and execute the Senate's rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, for which he was a recipient of the National Institute for Public Policy's Security and Arms Control Award for 1999.
Prior to his positions with Senator Cochran, Mr. Kugler worked in the private sector on the Strategic Defense Initiative and at the Heritage Foundation as Assistant to the President.
In 2003 Mr. Kugler was a member of a group empanelled by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy to advise DoD on policy options related to the nexus of international missile defense cooperation, export controls, and the MTCR.
Mr. Kugler graduated in 1983 from West Point and served in the U.S. Army for five years as an infantry officer. He obtained his Master of Arts degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University in 1992.
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