Major General
Frank P. Ragano

Major General Frank P. Ragano was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 7, 1928. He completed undergraduate studies at Duquesne University in 1950 and earned an MBA from Syracuse University in 1964. He was drafted into the Army in 1950 and subsequently completed the Leadership Training Course at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He had an opportunity to either join the 3rd Armored Division Band as a trumpet player or attend the Ordnance Officer Candidate School at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. He elected to become an officer and earned his commission in 1952.

Following a tour in Korea, he attended the Guided Missile Course at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, after which he completed tours at Fort Sheridan, Illinois; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; the Ordnance Center and School at Aberdeen Proving Ground; and in Germany. In 1965, he was assigned to the Pentagon as a systems analyst and then went to the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics as Closed Loop Officer under Lieutenant General Joseph Heiser. He completed a tour in Vietnam as commander of the maintenance battalion in the First Cavalry Division before being assigned to the faculty of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. He attended the Army War College in 1970, and remained there as a member of the new Department of Management, in which he emphasized the motivational aspects of executive leadership. In the early 1970s, he was project manager for various weapons systems at Picatinny Arsenal and Redstone Arsenal before becoming Commanding General of the U.S. Army Missile Research and Development Command at Redstone Arsenal in 1977. In his final year of service, he completed a special worldwide conventional ammunition review for the Army Chief of Staff.

Since his retirement in 1980, Major General Ragano has been a valued and active player in the United States defense munitions industrial base. His firm was awarded the contract for cleaning up the United States sector in Kuwait following Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm.