Phillip E. Wralstad has touched the service and operational testing of every U.S. Army tactical intelligence and electronic warfare prototype system during his 35 years of dedicated service in the Army testing community, including one conducted by him in Vietnam during the height of the conflict.

During his distinguished career, Mr. Wralstad was directly involved in hundreds of formal tests, demonstrations, experiments, and user evaluations of intelligence and electronic warfare systems.

He encouraged operational testing of national intelligence systems, and proposed the establishment of a Special Projects Test Office that assumed responsibility for operational test and evaluation functions of the Army Space Program Office that sponsored acquisition of Technical and National Capabilities Program (TENCAP) systems for deployment to Army corps and below military units.

Mr. Wralstad was singularly effective in establishing the nucleus of an instrumentation capability to support and scientifically assess the capabilities of intelligence and electronic warfare systems as they proceed through operational testing.  Under his direction, this instrumentation section came to be considered as the model for the execution of operational testing.

As the senior civilian tester in the TEXCOM Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Test Directorate, Mr. Wralstad was a role model and mentor to both military and civilian test officers.  His willingness to share his extensive knowledge, experience, and insight to the challenging role of test design and execution have served to produce many leaders in this field.