Dik Alan Daso, Ph.D., is the curator of modern military aircraft at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. A retired Air Force pilot, he has logged more than 2,700 hours of flight time in various aircraft, including the F-15. He also taught history at the United States Air Force Academy and served as chief of Air Force doctrine at the Pentagon. Daso is the author of Architects of American Air Supremacy: Gen. Hap Arnold and Dr. Theodore Vab Karmen and Hap Arnold and the Evolution of AMerican Air Power, which won the 2001 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Manuscript Award. He lives in the Washington, D.C., area.