Glendale Union High School District grad supporting Navy's undersea vehicles

Tucked away on a peninsula in the Pacific Northwest, sailors and engineers are working to extend the U.S. Navy’s reach and push the capabilities of unmanned vehicles.

Chief Petty Officer Christopher Cormier, a native of Phoenix, is one of the sailors assigned to Commander, Unmanned Undersea Group 1, the Navy’s first unmanned undersea command.

Cormier graduated from Washington High School, part of the Glendale Union High School District, in 2009.

The skills and values needed to succeed in the Navy are similar to those found in the Valley.

“Growing up in central Phoenix, there was a hustle mentality,” Cormier said. “You always wanted to be doing a lot of things and doing those things to their complete finality. Growing up, any downtime I had I was doing things I shouldn’t have been doing. In the Navy, I stay busy and I’m always trying to move the ball forward.”

Cormier joined the Navy 14 years ago. Today he serves as an operations specialist.

“I joined the Navy so I could afford Olive Garden,” Cormier said. “I grew up dirt poor. My best friend joined the Navy and when he came home on leave he took me to Olive Garden. He paid the bill and didn’t even look at it. At that moment, I thought, ‘If I join the Navy I’d be able to afford Olive Garden.’ I wanted better opportunities than I had.”

Established in 2017, Commander, Unmanned Undersea Vehicle Group 1 operates rapidly deployable unmanned undersea vehicles to further the Navy’s underwater capabilities and learn more about the sea from information provided by the vehicles’ sensors, according to Navy officials. These unmanned vehicles can go into environments that a human crew may not be able to safely or easily reach.