Association of Old Crows

Updated November 13, 2011

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The Association of Old Crows is a non-profit organization dedicated to electronic warfare with 13,500 members. By joining the society you will monthly publication called Journal of Electronic Defense, it is quite informative yet economical. Membership in AOC is kind of like a cross between the IEEE and a trade journal. At $45 per year it is cheaper to join than IEEE.

http://www.crows.org/

Here we have cropped some membership info from the Old Crow web site (we don't think they'll mind):

The Association of Old Crows (AOC) is a not-for-profit international professional association with over 13,500 members and 180+ organizations engaged in the science and practice of Electronic Warfare (EW), Information Operations (IO), and related disciplines.

AOC has members in 47 countries with 69 chapters in 20 countries. AOC’s membership includes executives, scientists, engineers, managers, operators, educators, and military personnel. Founded in 1964, the AOC owns a headquarters building in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC.

History of Old Crows

This info was also cropped from the Old Crow website:

During World War II Allied ECM officers, tasked to disrupt enemy communications and radars, were given the code name of "Raven" o provide a degree of security to their existence. After WWII, a group of Raven operators were directed to establish a SAC flying course in ECM operations at McGuire AFB, New Jersey. From all accounts from those present at the time, the students changed the name to "Crows" and those engaged in the profession became known as Old Crows.

In early 1942, Mel Jackson was the first officer assigned to ECM duties in the US Army Air Corps and he served in ECM staff positions throughout WWII. Mel Jackson was also the first to come up with the idea of an Association of Old Crows. Sometime around 1953, while he was a marketing manager for CGS Associates doing business in ECM equipment, Mel Jackson had membership certificates made, had some identifying coins minted, and began passing out memberships to the military personnel he was dealing with, as a sort of honorarium from his company. Mel Jackson adopted a logo for the association (similar to the AOC logo shown above, right) from the one used by the Aircraft Radiation Laboratory (ARL) at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio in 1953. During the 1950’s, many versions of that Crow logo appeared on decals, coffee mugs, tie clasps, lapel pins, ash trays, and other assorted memorabilia being distributed by the industrial participants as promotional give-aways. Some SAC ECM organizations had a version that carried the motto "Non Videbunt", which translates from the Latin to "They Shall Not See".The AOC logo shown above right was formally adopted as AOC’s official logo in 1965.

In the summer of 1964, five or six meetings were held of interested parties to consider what kind of an event to stage and just how and where to stage it. Out of these meetings, a plan was developed to schedule the reunion during the time of the annual convention of the Air Force Association, which would bring in many of the Crows from outside the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The final tally of the Crows banquet at the Shoreham Hotel held on September 9th, 1964 was 360 attendees. They came from all over the US and included all three military services, as well as many from industry and universities engaged in ECM research. Of that group of attendees, 130 joined the AOC and paid $5.00 for one year’s membership dues and the AOC was born with Frank Witry as AOC’s first elected President.