Do you guys remember Christine Fox?
She was the chick that used to debrief us down in NKX in the Topgun spaces.
At the time she was a CNA analyst.
Later she was the model for "Charlie" in the Topgun movie.
She's aged a lot better than Kelly Mcgillis.
Those were the days. I believe this article came from the Pentagon Early Bird.

Fox, Kendall and Co.

The Obama administration's nominees for top Pentagon jobs overseeing
budget and acquisition issues will testify at a Senate confirmation hearing
next week.

Christine Fox, the nominee to lead the Cost Assessment and Program
Evaluation (CA&PE) shop, and Frank Kendall, the nominee for the
Pentagon's No. 2 acquisition job, will be among the witnesses at the Oct. 22
hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Fox recently stepped down as president of the Center for Naval Analyses.

Kendall, who would be the deputy to Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton
Carter, has served most recently as a managing partner at Renaissance
Strategic Advisors.

Also testifying will be Gladys Commons, the nominee to be the Navy's
comptroller and Terry Yonkers, who is in line to become assistant
secretary of the Air Force for installations and environment.

–– Chris Castelli

Posted 10/15/2009



Christine H. Fox, a Naval Mathematician, was the inspiration for Charlie Blackwood's character in the 1986 film Top Gun, played by Kelly McGillis.
Originally, the female lead was to be stereotypical, but thanks to an Admiral, that didn't happen.
Charlie was in the "firsts" for major stereotype-smashing, ceiling-crashing roles for women in recent popular culture.

As a mathematician who uses her skills to solve national security and defense problems, Christine H. Fox, BS Mathematics '76 and MS Applied Mathematics '80, is accustomed to being one of the few women in her field. Fox says she does not consider her career path unusual.

"My father was a nuclear engineer in the Navy," she says. "From a very early age, I was encouraged to consider math as an option. My father always said, 'If you can do math, you can do anything.' Math was never presented as something scary or too challenging. It was presented not only as a fundamental tool, but as something great."

Indeed, math has been great for Fox. She has leveraged her mathematical skills and other talents into a rewarding career at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), a federally funded research and development center.

Fox started at CNA as an analyst and steadily worked her way up to becoming president in 2004. During her 24-year career, she has traveled around the world, working directly with Navy, Marine Corps and joint military forces to help them find the best ways to use new weapons and technology and become more effective and efficient. Fox also served on the independent task force studying the Columbia space shuttle disaster.

Fox was even the inspiration for a character in a movie starring Tom Cruise. In the mid-1980s, Fox was CNA's field representative at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego, working on site with the F-14 fighter pilots at the elite flying school located on the base. Film producer Jerry Bruckheimer was making "Top Gun," an action adventure featuring cool flying sequences as the pilots competed to be the best of the best. Cruise played hot-shot pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, and because no Hollywood movie is complete without a little romance, Kelly McGillis was hired to play the love interest.

The original script called for McGillis's character to be a Navy officer. "The admiral assigned by the Navy to oversee the production had script approval," Fox recalls, adding that of course, the officer–officer romance was a no-go. "Then [Bruckheimer] suggested that the character could be an aerobics teacher at the Officer's Club," Fox says. "[The admiral] replied, 'How about [modeling the character after] my CNA rep?'"

Fox was called into the admiral's office to meet Bruckheimer, and McGillis' character became Charlotte "Charlie" Blackwood, civilian instructor and Maverick's girlfriend. Fox worked with McGillis so that she could make her role more realistic.

"I later read a review panning 'Top Gun,' as being completely unrealistic that a civilian woman would work in such a macho environment," Fox says, laughing. "I thought about writing that reviewer a letter to set him straight."

As she has risen through the ranks of CNA, Fox has understandably moved away from the hands-on analysis work that she finds so exciting and rewarding, and more toward the administrative aspects that she admits can become tedious. But she says she has found new challenges in her role as a mentor to analysts just beginning their careers with CNA.

I will not make the obvious comments...

A few Sam Adams and I would most likely hit it...

Only if she'll call me Goose

She "Took My Breath Away" and I think I've "Lost that Lovin Feelin".

 

Shit!  That's Kelly McGillis???!!!!   Man, carpet munching really took it's toll on her!  



 

Time does terrible things to a body

Interesting.  I met someone who works for CNA today.

Holy crap, woman really do hit a mother fucking wall, dunnay?

Meh, it all balances out. Woman hold all the cards in their 20's and 30's and men have to scrape by on begging and crumbs off the table.
then they hit the fucking wall and men in their 40's and 50's get voted Peoples "Sexiest man in hollywood" award.
So then they hit the wall and go off to "bon bon and oprah land" and we men with gravitas look for younger greener pastures.
Its Allahs will i tells ya! You know, perfect balance, Ying and Wang.........and so forth.

Grace Hopper was also a USN admiral.

If I were 50 I'd be all over that.

I'd hit that like a Carrier Battlegroup.








 

I'll be in my bunk.