25 May Richard Perkins
Richard Perkins is a former airline captain with over twenty-nine years of international flight experience in over thirty countries. Mr. Perkins has served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA), representing over seventy different airlines and forty thousand airline pilots. Additionally, he was the Vice Chair of Security of a major cargo airline for ALPA. He was also a qualified Federal Flight Deck Law Enforcement Officer, designated by the US Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Perkins served for thirty years, active and reserve, in the United States Marine Corps as a Navl Aviator in the F-18 Hornet, and later with US Special Operations Command, retiring as a full Colonel. As part of his distinguished service, he executed multiple worldwide deployments as a fighter pilot and later ground combat deployments with Special Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. During these operations, Mr. Perkins was decorated for Valor as well as being wounded in combat. His last tour found him as senior advisor to the Commander, Afghan Border Police, directing a border Task Force from the US Embassy, Kabul, Afghanistan. Here he led an effort to establish screening and security procedures at multiple border crossings into Afghanistan and at Kabul International Airport. In this capacity, he oversaw the training contract for over 9000 Afghan Border Police officers and established the first non-commissioned officer program for the Border Police. Additionally, he was the prime mover in forwarding legislative language to the Afghan Parliament to prohibit the import of dangerous materials into Afghanistan. In this capacity, he was the US representative to the Dubai Peace Process concerning trade and security issues on the Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan and later, the Central Asian Counter Narcotics Conference.
Mr. Perkins received a Bachelor of Science from the United States Naval Academy and a Masters of Art in Diplomacy with a concentration on Terrorism from Norwich University. He is a graduate of the US Joint Special Operations University and multiple high-level programs at the National Defense University, the US Naval Postgraduate School, and the Joint Forces Staff College. Mr. Perkins was also a designated naval aircraft mishap investigator.