Richard "Rick" Franklin Jr

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Rick Franklin didn’t serve in the shadows; he served above them. His eight years in the Navy, from 1987 to 1995, were defined by long flights, classified missions, and the kind of technical mastery that keeps carriers, strike groups, and national decision-makers a step ahead of whatever is coming.

He was a Naval Aircrewman and Electronic Aviation Warfare Operator—one of the few trusted to fly into contested airspace with a headset on, an intelligence system in front of him, and the responsibility to know exactly what every radar, emitter, and signal in the battlespace meant. He logged more than 2,500 flight hours, not on milk runs but on intelligence-gathering missions that fed directly into U.S. military operations across the globe. When Desert Shield shifted to Desert Storm, he was already airborne, already collecting, already delivering the kind of electronic intelligence commanders rely on when lives and missions hang in the balance.

 His TS/SCI clearance wasn’t a credential; it was a recognition that he was trusted with the most sensitive operational secrets the Navy handled.

When he wasn’t in the air, he was shaping the people who would take his place. Rick became an Electronic Warfare Intelligence Instructor, building the advanced curriculum that trained the fleet’s next generation of operators and analysts. He wrote and taught courses on Advanced RF Theory and Advanced Antenna Theory—subjects that only a fraction of servicemembers ever touch, let alone master. He developed the advanced Electronic Warfare curriculum used across fleet intelligence efforts, ensuring operators understood not just how to push buttons, but how to analyze, interpret, and act on the signals that define modern warfare.

He served in an era when electronic warfare was shifting from niche specialty to strategic necessity. Rick was at the front of that shift—flying, analyzing, teaching, and ensuring the Navy’s eyes and ears were always open and always sharper than the other side’s.

His service was technical, demanding, often quiet, and absolutely essential.