Marco Romero, head of the Point Mugu Sea Range Military Radar Unit/Air Traffic Control/Rand Control Office, isn’t quite ready to come in for a landing after 40 years of service, but he definitely has the runway in sight.
Rear Adm. Scott Dillon, Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division commander, presented Romero with a 40-year length-of-service award in a ceremony Feb. 5 in Point Mugu, California, teasing Romero about the possible allure of a 45-year certificate. “Marc is threatening to retire around November 2021,” Dillon said. “That’s far enough off that we have time to talk him out of it. I always enjoy offering up the opportunity to present a 45-year certificate, because that level of expertise is not easy to come by.”
Romero joined the Navy in 1979 and served on active duty as an air traffic controller for 22 years. His career took him all over the world, with stops in Crete; Yokosuka, Japan; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; and two aircraft carriers. Romero also did a pair of tours at Point Mugu, and once he retired from active duty service in 2001, he brought his ATC skills to the Sea Range.
Now, Romero’s leading teams that make the magic happen, or so Point Mugu Sea Range Director Mike Laber believes. When the MQ-4C Triton team needed to execute their first deployment to Guam, they were on an eight-hour ready alert status. Because it was the airframe’s first deployment, visibility was high.
“This is the man right here,” Laber said of Romero. “He and his team are the ones that made it happen. Whether they wanted to go at three in the morning or three in the afternoon, Marc and his very small team were the pros that made sure they were manning the station, getting the airspace activated and letting those guys get out of here.”
“These sort of things don’t just happen because somebody’s pulling out a checklist or following a set of standard procedures,” Dillon said. “They’re the consequence of the experience that people bring to the job. You can’t teach someone overnight.”
Passing that knowledge on is one of Romero’s current tasks. With a possible retirement on the horizon, he’s trying to make sure the next crop of air traffic control experts is ready to run the mission without him.
“Right now, my passion is my work,” Romero said. “I enjoy it, and that’s good for now, but I’ve got to start shifting that to other things.”
What that new passion might become, Romero’s not 100 percent sure yet, but right now he’s enjoying being a dad to his three daughters and spending time hiking, sailing and traveling with them and his wife of 33 years, Carmen.