Photo By Mark Schauer | Current U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) Technical Director Larry Bracamonte (left)...... read more read more
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U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) Technical Director Larry Bracamonte passed away on Saturday, August 17 after a battle with cancer.
Serving as YPG’s highest ranking civilian since 2018, he had worked at the proving ground since 1987.
“Larry's leadership, extensive experience, and unwavering dedication to the YPG mission have been truly inspirational,” said Col. John Nelson, YPG Commander. “His passion and commitment have left an indelible mark on our organization at all levels.”
A Yuma native whose father worked at the proving ground, Bracamonte showed interest in mechanics at an early age.
“As a kid, I had a passion for shooting rockets and coming up with contraptions that did things,” he said in a 2018 interview. “One of my friends’ dad would buy old cars in various states of disarray, and helping him fix those cars while I was in high school taught me a lot.”
After graduating from Yuma High School in 1981, he went to the University of Arizona and majored in mechanical engineering. Degree in hand, he returned home in 1987 and started at YPG testing tank ammunition.
“My plan was to make a little money, stay a year or two, and then move on somewhere else,” he recalled. “But when I actually started working here, it was very exciting and challenging. I really, really liked the job, and stayed.”
As the years progressed, Bracamonte was promoted numerous times. From team leader to branch chief, then division chief. In 2011 he was inducted into the Honorable Order of Saint Barbara, an honor society for those associated with artillery in the United States Army and Marine Corps. He attended a prestigious course of study at Cranfield University at the United Kingdom’s Royal Military College of Science, then became the director of YPG’s Ground Combat Systems Directorate and finally technical director, the post’s highest-ranking civilian position. Just prior to that, he worked a detail as the Associate Director of Test Management at the Army Test and Evaluation Command, YPG’s senior command.
A significant portion of his time at the proving ground was during the direst days of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Soldiers and Marines saw threats first from rockets and mortars, then from devastating improvised explosive devices. The Department of Defense rapidly tested technologies to defeat these threats and rapidly fielded armored vehicles to mitigate their destructive power: YPG testers and supporting personnel routinely worked 60 and 70-hour work weeks over the course of years to meet or exceed the critically tight schedules.
As technical director, Bracamonte oversaw YPG’s successful navigation of the COVID pandemic as it simultaneously hosted the capstone event of the Army Futures Command’s Project Convergence in both 2020 and 2021, the latter iteration of which was the Army’s largest capabilities demonstration of the preceding 15 years, drawing multiple visits from the highest-ranking military and civilian leadership of the Army and Department of Defense. The post also hosted the Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team’s Experimental Demonstration Gateway Event in 2023.
His leadership was also instrumental in the creation of the post’s widely acclaimed Employee Modernization Effort for Relevant Growth and Enrichment (EMERGE) program, a wide-ranging and comprehensive effort to promote workforce modernization that covers everything from developing new test methodologies for advanced technologies to leadership strategies and critical thinking.
Through it all, Bracamonte said, YPG’s mission remained constant across the decades.
“Everybody at YPG strives to produce the best product we can for our Soldiers,” he said. “He or she is our ultimate customer, and everyone here knows that doing their work correctly means a Soldier can perform their mission safely and successfully.”
| Date Taken: | 08.20.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 08.20.2024 18:56 |
| Story ID: | 479070 |
| Location: | YUMA PROVING GROUND, ARIZONA, US |
| Web Views: | 1,670 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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