The Crittenden Press printed edition featured two area natives in this week's coverage of the five-year anniversary of the fall of Baghdad in the Iraq war. This is one of those stories. Tomorrow, online, we will feature SFC Scott Hurley.For Ryan Boisture, the past eight years have been fast-paced and explosive, all largely thanks to the war in Iraq.
A 1998 graduate of Crittenden County High School, Boisture joined the military as the battle sabers began rattling at the dawn of the 21st century. He had an understanding of technology and was assigned to the White House Communications Agency.
From there, the action got a little hotter when he was sent to the Middle East, serving 13 months in Kuwait and Iraq. It was there that he learned many valuable lessons, some of which provided him with the skills to succeed outside the military. He was honorably discharged a couple of years ago, but has kept his hand on some very strategic buttons.
Now, at 27, Boisture is married and the father of
three. His job is still directly related to the military's Operation Iraqi Freedom, but he's stateside and uses the knowledge he gleaned from the U.S. Army and online college courses. He now maintains communications equipment for a government contractor.
"I manage a stack of seven servers which consist of a Cisco, Terawave, Avaya Conference Bridge, Nortel, Video Switch, Sequoia and a management server. Pretty much, to put it more simply, I keep Yuma Proving Grounds communicating in an orderly and expedient fashion," he said.
Yuma Proving Grounds is located in the Arizona desert. It's one of the United States' most sophisticated centers for weapons testing.
"What I do is in direct support of the weapons and munitions testing," he said.
"The things that go on here would blow your mind if you’re into blowing things up," Boisture continued. "Most ground to air, mortar intercept and wireless controlled explosive device defeating systems are tested right here."
It's not Star Wars, but pretty close and what Boisture does is control the Internet, Ethernet, Intranet and all of the highly-technical devices that allow command and control to communicate with people and electronic equipment.
Before going to Arizona, Boisture was with another government contractor in Albuquerque, N.M., that worked on highly-profitable projects aimed at developing jamming devices to counter improvised electronic devices (IEDs) used by insurgents in Iraq.
While his current job with Northrop Grumman is rewarding, he'd love to be back home. Like so many young people who leave Marion, Boisture has found that he is much more employable elsewhere.
"I’m home-sick," he said. "I would love to be able to find a decent job back there somewhere; nothing special, just something that could provide a comfortable living."
