Edward "Otto" Pernotto (LtCol USAFR)
Founder and President

Edward "Otto" Pernotto, Founder and President of Excalibur, was born and raised in Youngstown Ohio, his father a WWII combat medic and lifelong union steelworker and his mother was a real life Rosie the Riveter working on jet fighter planes during the Korean War. Pernotto graduated from the Ohio State University and completed Air Force Reserve Officer’s Training Course and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the US Air Force. During his active duty career, he flew the B-52G as Navigator and Radar Navigator at Barksdale AFB, Shreveport LA, the FB-111 fighter bomber, Plattsburgh AFB, New York, and HC-130 special operations forces (SOF) aircraft, at Kadena Air Base, Japan and was a Contingency and Exercise Planner coordinating exercises across Asia. His last active duty assignment was with the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he worked closely with various SOF units.

Pernotto left active duty and became a Department of Defense (DOD) civilian as the first Force Plans Officer for the Naval Special Warfare (NSW) Command in San Diego, CA, the parent headquarters for the US Navy SEALs. He was the senior official for all deliberate planning and was a team member on the highly successful experimental High Speed Vessel “Joint Venture.” Concurrent with his DOD civilian time, he was an Air Force Reserve officer assigned to the Special Operations Command-Pacific, at Camp Smith, Hawaii.

Pernotto left the civil service and worked in the defense industry in the greater Washington, D.C. area. Upon the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he volunteered for active duty and initially deployed to Kuwait and later to Baghdad, Iraq, to help stand up the first Iraq based NSW force. In 2005, he was assigned to the Joint Staff J-5 in the Pentagon conducting the “Metrics” evaluation for Afghanistan and worked closely within the inter-agency. He remains assigned as a Reserve Officer to the Joint Staff.

His operational experience includes service onboard the Aircraft Carrier USS America during Haiti, the Combined Air Operations Center in Italy for Bosnia, and the carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Persian Gulf. He was the project officer for the Eighth Air Force Museum at Barksdale AFB in Shreveport and flew in, directed, or narrated dozen’s of air shows throughout the US and Canada, and has served as a military advisor with the entertainment industry.