Major General Joseph Franklin

Major General Joseph Franklin


(USA, Retired, USMA 1955)

Born in 1933 in the small Appalachian town of Cumberland, Maryland, Franklin won a competitive appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1951 and graduated in 1955 with a a commission in the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
After preliminary military schooling, which included Parachute and Ranger qualification, Franklin was assigned to Karlsruhe, Germany where he served with Combat Engineering units until 1959. He was then sent to MIT to earn a Masters Degree in Civil Engineering and Nuclear Engineering. In 1961 Joseph Franklin was assigned to the Army's Nuclear Power Program, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. where he was Project Manager for the installation of a nuclear power plant on board a converted Liberty ship. In 1963 Franklin was assigned to command Camp Century, a nuclear-powered research outpost on the Greenland Icecap. He directed the shutdown and disassembly of the nuclear power plant, shipping the entire facility back to the United States in 1964.
Selected for instructor duty at West Point in 1965, Franklin taught the first Nuclear Engineering course and coached the football and ski teams during his three years as an Assistant Professor at the Academy. After a year's further study at the Naval War College, Franklin he shipped out to Vietnam to command a Combat Engineer Battalion in the Central Highlands, ending his tour after participating in the 1970 operations in Cambodia.
The decade of the 1970's was taken up with Joint Staff duties in the Pentagon, including assignment as Executive Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, plus a Brigade Command at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and another year of study at the Army War College.
Promoted to Brigadier General in 1979, Franklin was selected to be Commandant of Cadets at West Point where he served until 1982. A tour of duty as Assistant Commander of the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii was followed by promotion to Major General and assignment in 1983 as Chief of the Joint US Military Group and Senior US Defense Representative in Spain. Franklin chose to retire in 1987, and remained in Spain, founding Franklin, S.A. a Spanish business consultancy located in Madrid, specializing in investments and joint ventures.
He was elected to the Board of Directors of several Spanish and American companies and returned to the United States in 1993, when he was elected Chief Executive Officer of Frequency Electronics, Inc. He has remained as Chairman of the Board of Frequency Electronics, Inc. since 1999. He also serves on the Board of Directors of RKO Pictures and Kriss-USA, a Swiss manufacturer of advanced technology small arms for military and civilian applications.