John H. Rubel
John H. Rubel (April 27, 1920 – January 13, 2015) was an American business executive in the post-World War II defense electronics industry and later Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy administration. He is known as one of Robert McNamara’s “whiz kids” and an early advocate of geosynchronous communications satellites.
Born in Chicago to a well-to-do Jewish family of German origin, Rubel moved with his mother to Los Angeles after his father died in 1927. He graduated from Los Angeles High School and earned an engineering degree from Caltech in 1942. Because his surviving brother was killed in action, he did not serve in World War II; instead he and his wife Dorothy worked as junior engineers at General Electric in Schenectady to help with the war effort. After the war he returned to Southern California to work for Lockheed.
In 1948 he joined a Hughes organization that grew into Hughes Electronics; by 1956 he directed most avionics business and managed about 2,000 people. He appeared in a Hughes ad as “the new man,” but the campaign was later dropped.
In 1959 Rubel joined the Pentagon as Assistant Director of Defense Research and Engineering. When McNamara became Secretary of Defense, Rubel stayed on as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, becoming known as one of the outsiders who joined McNamara’s team.
As Assistant Secretary, Rubel helped push spin-stabilized geosynchronous satellites such as SYNCOM I and SYNCOM II, which led to the government charter for COMSAT and helped start Hughes’ satellite business and the modern satellite industry. He also supported the Titan III launch vehicle.
He left the Pentagon in 1963 and worked for Litton Industries for ten years, where he oversaw the design of a highly automated shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The shipyard produced many Navy ships and is now part of Huntington Ingalls Industries, a major Gulf Coast employer.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 03:53 (CET).