J. Harris Arnold

J. Harris Arnold (2742 - 2853) was the founder, CEO, and lead designer of Anvil Aerospace. He was an eccentric spacecraft designer of the old school who insisted on signing off on every part of his designs' subsystems, and a beloved figure in an otherwise cutthroat industry, a personality trait he maintained after founding Anvil Aerospace in 2772.

Career
Arnold began his career as a junior designer at Aegis Dynamics in 2763, where he would eventually be assigned to assist on Project Monitor, developing the vehicle which would become the Hammerhead.

He quit his position in Aegis in 2770 after some setbacks with his supervisors and went to found his own company with undisclosed funding. In 2772, construction on his new shipbuilding facility in Nova Kyiv, Terra was complete. Arnold named the new company Anvil Aerospace in reference to former MIST professor Robert Calvin's famous assertion from his book Mechanisms of Empire that military spending «...fuels the furnaces of expansion and strikes the anvils of innovation».

Within the first year, Arnold and his team had created a prototype fighter called the Osprey. Using connections he had made during his time at Aegis, Arnold showed the prototype to a small gathering of Navy officials. The ship proved to be a hit and the Navy placed Anvil's first ever order.

Design Inspiration
Arnold was obsessed with the works of Leonard Casse. To him, the mostly forgotten engineer represented everything he loved about ship design. When he eventually started his own ship manufacturing company, Arnold drew heavy inspiration from Casse's business model and ships for his own designs, utilizing such signature elements as the curvedwings and open circle signet. The similarities were such that Arnold and his fledgling company, Anvil Aerospace, was sued by the holding firm who had bought the rights to Casse's designs. Arnold decided to settle the case by purchasing all of Casse Aerospace's portfolio himself. Now the owner of Casse's legacy, Arnold sought an opportunity to put the company's original designs to use, but one didn't present itself for close to seventy years.

Breaktrough
After the events of the anti-Messer revolution in 2792, the UEE stripped Aegis Dynamics of most of its contracts due to its strong association with the Messer regime and the Navy started offering contracts directly to Anvil, like the Terrapin or the Hornet.

Later life
Arnold semi-retired in 2840, maintaining control over Anvil ship design processes and served as guest lecturer at the Martian Institute of Space and Technology. He died at his desk in 2853.