Capt. Kevin Little
West 1973
Capt. Kevin Little was the U.S. defense and naval attaché in Madrid, Spain, until completing more than 30 years of military service in October 2008. He served as the senior military advisor to the U.S. ambassador to Spain, and he was the senior military representative for the U.S. Department of Defense in Spain. His outstanding diplomatic and professional skills, dedication to the mission, and unparalleled initiative have resulted in contributions of major significance to the U.S. military and defense policy objectives.
For over 20 years, Little was an operational naval aviator flying three different tactical jet aircraft and deploying on aircraft carriers around the world. In the U.S., he was qualified in the A-7 Corsair II and the FA-18 Hornet. He flew the Super Etendard jet on French aircraft carriers during one two-year period as an exchange pilot with the French Navy, where he became fluent in the French language. He was assigned for two years to Washington, D.C., as the Navy jet assignments officer and as a naval aide de camp for a three-star admiral at the Pentagon. In 1995, as the commanding officer, his FA-18 Hornet squadron was selected as the number one squadron (Estocin Award) over all 25 operational Navy Hornet squadrons in the U.S. Navy.
The past 10 years of his career have been a mixture of education and international relations, with a concentration on political and military affairs. He coordinated over 500 ship visits to 27 Spanish/French ports. In mid-2007, while in Spain, he developed and implemented a strategy for U.S. Navy ships to return to Spanish ports outside of Rota Naval Air Station following a 14-month hiatus due to political force protection issues. He also was the team leader in bilateral interactions between the U.S. and Spanish navies, which was critical to protecting deployments during Operation Enduring Freedom.
Between military assignments to Bahrain, France and Spain, he earned a master’s degree and was a military professor for two years. In addition to teaching duties, he wrote graduate-level curriculum for international students, provided lectures at two military Latin American/Caribbean Military College conferences and was the editor for a case study textbook.
Little earned his B.S. degree in biology at Drake University in 1977 (magna cum laude), and later earned his M.S. degree in national security strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. Before his exchanged duty to France, he attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif. He is fluent in both French and Spanish.
Little and his wife, Marie-Noelle, live in La Garde, France. Their children, Justine and Wesley, are students in the United States.