Meet the Team: Robert Edwards, Nuclear Weapons Incident Response Outreach Program Manager

10 April 2025

From Edvin Hernandez

Meet Robert Edwards, the nuclear weapons incident response outreach program manager at Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) in Washington, D.C. In his past life as an enlisted service member for the U.S. Air Force, Edwards supported several mission-critical functions for each of his commands, including fighting actual fires.

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“After high school, I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do,” Edwards said. “I was working a full-time job and I finally decided – as much I liked my hometown – I needed to see more of the world. So I joined the Air Force.”

He began basic training in 1996, and after completing it, had additional fire training at the Louis F. Garland Fire Academy at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. Once Edwards finished his training he was assigned to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina – an hour away from New Bern, the city where he is originally from. At the base, Edwards was a fire protection specialist and began to climb the ranks in his department.

“I started off as the guy riding backseat in the fire trucks and pulling the fire hoses,” he said. “As I moved up, I began to assume newer responsibilities such as being assigned as the driver of the truck, making sure the fire crews made it safely to emergencies as quickly as possible, setting the proper pressure for all deployed fire hoses, and setting out the tools and equipment the firefighters needed to mitigate the emergencies. After some more experience and training, I became a crew chief, which is equivalent to a captain in a civilian fire department.”

A couple years later, Edwards was on the move again except this time to Misawa Air Base in Japan. While stationed overseas, he served as a fire inspector and was responsible for dealing with brush fires, burning rocket fuel, and other emergencies involving hazardous fire material. Edwards also spent time in the base’s dispatch center, managing and organizing emergency operations with his team.

“Alarm activations could go off at any time,” he said. “My job was to ensure everyone was ready to go whenever the alarm sounded. You never knew the situation until you arrived at the scene and it ranged from dealing with hazardous materials, to vehicle accidents and aircraft emergencies, to medical emergencies. As firefighters and first responders, we had to be qualified as emergency medical technicians.”

Although the bulk of his firefighting duties were on base, Edwards and his team also had a responsibility to act as first responders to their local and surrounding community.

“Sometimes we were the first on the scene for car accidents on highways or house fires, and other things of that nature, too,” he said. “The job had its intense moments and it really required our team to be on our toes to support the people around us.”

Some of the other bases Edwards served as an enlisted fire inspector include Kunsan Air Base in Korea and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. He retired as the assistant chief of training at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina in 2016, completing a full career circle from trainee to trainer. Soon after retiring, he accepted a job as a civilian fire inspector at Vandenburg Space Force Base – formerly an Air Force base – in Santa Barbara County, California.

When his wife, who also served in the Air Force, received orders to support Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, Edwards moved with his family to the east coast and began working as a fire inspector with multiple government agencies including the Office of the Pentagon Fire Marshal and Naval District Washington Fire and Emergency Services in the D.C. metropolitan area. While working closely with other agencies in the region, Edwards became familiar with SSP.

“We had some regular contact with SSP’s Nuclear Weapon Surety, Policy, and Compliance Branch to support mission-readiness in case of an emergency,” he said. “That kind of put this command on the radar for me. When the role I am currently in opened up, I applied for it and now I’m part of the team.”

Edwards admits one of his biggest challenges has been adapting to Navy jargon.

“Coming from the Air Force and working for a Navy command took some getting used to,” he said. “The terminology is different; it’s like speaking another language. I’m thankful our command offers an acronyms list we can reference, but keeping up with all of it when I first on-boarded was like drinking from the fire hose.”

Now, almost two years in the job, Edwards fills a critical role for the command in leading and coordinating readiness efforts for nuclear weapons incident response trainings. This includes preparing the workforce for specific emergencies should they occur on vessels or on a Navy installation.

In his spare time, he is attending online school at Waldorf University to complete his bachelor’s degree in emergency management. Apart from holding a demanding position at SSP and being a father of two young children, Edwards expects to graduate with his degree next year. According to Edwards, one of the things that motivates him every single day is his commitment to saving and protecting lives.

“Whether I was in the field patching people up and helping them to safety or providing proper fire code enforcement in the office, saving lives is a priority,” he said. “What we are doing here at SSP for strategic platforms is protecting our warfighters. It is protecting our nation. To me, that aspect of this job is so important; and now, rather than being boots on the ground like I was when I was enlisted, setting and enforcing these codes helps our Navy do our sensitive work with nuclear weapons in the safest manner possible.”

SSP is responsible for sustaining strategic weapon system (SWS) on the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) and supporting the integration of the D5LE weapon system on the new Columbia-class SSBNs. Looking to the future, SSP is integral to nuclear triad modernization with development of the D5LE2 SWS and creating regional strike capabilities with the development of the nuclear sea launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) and the non-nuclear hypersonic conventional prompt strike system (CPS).

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Meet the Team: Robert Edwards, Nuclear Weapons Incident Response Outreach Program Manager

From Edvin Hernandez