Avionics Keynote: Brigadier General Hans-Georg Schmidt

Entered military service in 1970 to become an Air Force Officer and pilot. He can look back on 28 years of flying fighter aircraft in various roles and a total of more than 3500 flying hours. He served as a commander at different levels including an assignment commanding a Fighter Bomber Wing and leading the German Air Force contingent during the Balcan Crisis (Bosnia and Kosovo). He returned from Afghanistan in 2011, where he served as the first Base Commander at Masar e Sharif for a period of eight months.

His operational assignments from tactical to the strategic level were regularily accompanied/ interrupted by a number of employments in national and international military staffs. Next to the experience as an airspace user he gained valauble expertise in airspace management, working as a branch chief at MOD level for ATM, flight regulations, and flight safety, where he established close contact with the German civil air navigation service provider DFS and the EUROCONTROL agency, also as a member in the respective supervisory boards.

Brigadier General Schmidt graduated from the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College after a two years General Staff Officer course in 1988 and in 2002 he successfully acquired a master degree in “National Security Strategy” at the U.S. National Defense University in Washington D.C.

He currently serves as the Vice Commander of 1st German Air Division, is responsible for Crew Resource Management and Human Performance Limitations in German Armed Forces, and is the elected Chairman of the Military Air Traffic
Management Board of EUROCONTROL.