BRADLEY J. YOUNG
Twenty years at the intersection of policy, procurement, and operations — from the Pentagon to the theater, and from Capitol Hill briefings to forward-deployed combat advisory.
Bradley J. Young is a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army and one of the nation's foremost practitioners of Integrated Air and Missile Defense. His career spans two decades of increasingly senior responsibility across the full IAMD enterprise — from battalion operations to Joint Staff policy, and from CONUS-based planning to operational combat advisory in the most complex threat environment in the world.
Currently serving as Air and Missile Defense Division Chief at the United States Military Training Mission (USMTM) Saudi Arabia, Young serves as the Senior Air Defense Officer in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, providing expert military advice directly to the Royal Saudi Air Defense Force Commander, the Saudi Ministry of Defense, and senior U.S. Embassy leadership. In this role, he manages a Foreign Military Sales portfolio valued in excess of $35 billion across 14 active cases — one of the largest IAMD FMS portfolios in the world.
His operational record is unambiguous. Young led the team of air defense experts during Operation Epic Fury that coordinated air defense operations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, directly contributing to the defense of Saudi critical infrastructure against over 2,000 aerial threats — including ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and UAS. He also oversaw the implementation of the first THAAD batteries in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a landmark achievement in regional IAMD architecture.
Prior to his current assignment, Young served as Lead Middle East War Planner at Army Central Command (ARCENT), where he authored component support plans, led the IAMD integration for the CENTCOM Combatant Command, and served as Red Team Lead for multiple numbered war plans. His CENTCOM tenure built on earlier service as Lead IAMD War Planner at the 32d Army Air and Missile Defense Command, where he led Joint Theater Air and Missile Defense Boards and designed IAMD force deployment cycles during active combat operations.
His foundational policy work was accomplished on the Joint Staff at J8/JIAMDO, where he served as IAMD Action Officer focused on Homeland Defense and Counter-UAS. In that capacity, he authored the base document for a landmark report to Congress on C-UAS capability gaps — work that shaped the trajectory of the U.S. C-UAS acquisition strategy — and briefed the Protection Functional Capabilities Board at the four-star level. He also represented the Joint Staff at the annual Industry-USG Ground Based Air Defense Summit.
"Effective advisory in this domain requires more than knowledge of the systems or the regulations. It requires understanding how decisions actually get made — inside service staffs, inside program offices, inside partner nation defense establishments. That institutional fluency only comes from having been inside those organizations at a senior level. That is what Terminal Defense Solutions brings to every engagement."