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  1 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Lockheed Signals Change Is Coming With New CEO

  Michael Bruno Lockheed Martin Chairman, CEO and President Marillyn Hewson became the prime example of how to stumble into the corner office of the Pentagon's top contractor and still provide laudable business results. Now, as she hands off the reins to an enigmatic successor, Lockheed stakeholders hope the uncertainty ahead will be just as lucrative. On March 16, the Bethesda, Maryland-based prime—the largest contractor to the U.S. Defense Department by annual sales—surprised many followers with the news that current Lockheed board member James “Jim” Taiclet, Jr. will become CEO and president on June 15, while Hewson becomes executive chairman. Lockheed also promoted Frank St. John, current executive vice president of the company's Rotary and Mission Systems (RMS) division, to become chief operating officer (COO)—a role that Hewson technically held last, and briefly, before her January 2013 appointment as chief executive. Before that, the COO role was mostly held by Chris Kubasik prior to his downfall at Lockheed. Stephanie Hill, now senior vice president for enterprise business transformation, was appointed to succeed St. John as executive vice president for RMS. These appointments also are effective June 15. Hewson is 66 years old and Taiclet is 59. The company, which does not have a retirement rule, had not announced a formal transition plan or successor process. Nevertheless, industry insiders were watching movements—such as St. John's rise and recent board appointments—and analysts said they assume the transition was planned before the ongoing COVID-19 crisis erupted. While the announcement was a surprise, the timing was not—due to Hewson's age and the fact that Lockheed ended 2019 with a record $144 billion backlog of work and a stock price that has more than tripled under Hewson, including the recent COVID-19-related pullback. Still, many observers are intrigued by the selection. “While Marillyn's retirement has been in the cards for a while, we were not expecting Lockheed to go outside the company for its new CEO,” say analysts at Vertical Research Partners. “Taiclet has an impressive pedigree based on his resume, but from an A&D perspective, he is an unknown quantity. . . . But with Marillyn sticking around as chairman, and a very experienced cohort of senior Lockheed managers, we are not expecting there to be any revolutionary change as a result of this appointment.” Cowen analysts also noted that St. John's appointment as COO further bookends Taiclet with experienced Lockheed managers. St. John, 53, joined Lockheed more than 30 years ago and as COO is naturally positioned as a potential future CEO, analysts say. Taiclet is currently chairman, president and CEO of American Tower, a real estate investment holding company and owner/operator of wireless and broadband communications networks, where he has held the executive reins since 2003. He joined that company in 2001 and, according to Lockheed, is credited with guiding American Tower's transformation from a U.S.-centric focus to a multinational business outlook. Analysts said he also was central in leading mergers and acquisitions as part of the company's expansion. American Tower announced an immediate replacement for Taiclet but said he will remain chairman and an advisor through June 14. Taiclet previously served as president of Honeywell Aerospace Services and before that was vice president for engine services at the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies (UTC). He also worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Co., specializing in telecommunications and aerospace strategy and operations. He is a retired U.S. Air Force pilot and Persian Gulf War veteran. Loren Thompson, a Lexington Institute consultant to Lockheed, says Hewson's selection of Taiclet seems calculated to continue her emphasis on tight financial management and good customer relations while positioning the leading prime for a changing demand environment. “That environment will be characterized by two shifts from previous years,” Thompson writes. “First, the defense budget will enter a flat to declining period very different from the spending increases of the early Trump [administration] years. Second, the preference of military customers for nontraditional suppliers who think like entrepreneurial enterprises rather than government contractors will continue to grow.” Hewson's selection of Taiclet also is telling because she has won the respect of many industry insiders, analysts and advisers. While unplanned, Hewson's tenure as CEO was deemed successful by most. “Hewson's tenure is known for operational execution with such programs as the F-35, while having a successful oversight in maintaining key businesses—such as in the evolving area of space with wins such as Next-Gen OPIR and GPS IIIF,” say Jefferies analysts. Company sales grew at a 5% compound annual growth rate from $45.4 billion in 2013 to an expected $63.3 billion this year. Taiclet's takeover sounds to many like more of the same—but different. “This is the first time Lockheed Martin has promoted someone who did not rise through the corporation to be president and CEO,” writes Capital Alpha Partners analyst Byron Callan. “We find it intriguing that he has a commercial background and wonder if that's not a different direction the company starts to explore in 2020-25.” https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/supply-chain/lockheed-signals-change-coming-new-ceo

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  21 juin 2019 | International, Naval

  Naval Engineers Must 'Lean In' to Advance Technological Agility

  BY C. TODD LOPEZ Rebuilding "strategic momentum" and growing advantages in the maritime domain are challenges Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson addressed in "A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, Version 2.0," which updated a 2016 document. At an annual meeting of the American Society of Naval Engineers today in Washington, Richardson said meeting those challenges is a "human problem" that must be met, in part by naval engineers. His plan for how the Navy will maintain maritime superiority relies in part on three aspects of agility. "With the joint force, we will restore agility — conceptual, geographic, and technological — to impose cost[s] on our adversaries across the competition-conflict spectrum," the report reads. For engineers, Richardson focused on their contribution to technological agility. "The technological landscape is changing so fast across all of technology," Richardson said. "It's really fueled by this information revolution that we are in the middle of right now. And so as we think about the Navy as a learning engine in and of itself, restoring these technical agilities is really important. We do need to move at pace." For comparison, the admiral referred back to Dec. 8, 1941 — a day after the bombing at Pearl Harbor. It was then, Richardson said, that the Navy began a quick transition from battleship-based tactics to aircraft carriers and aerial battles. He said the switch in strategy wasn't a surprise for the Navy, because it had been researching and engineering for that possibility for years. "We had been 20 years into naval aviation," he said. "This was not just something that we did as a pickup team on Dec. 8. We had been putting investments in with folks like [Joseph] Reeves and [William] Moffett and all those pioneers of naval aviation. We had evidence. A lot of experimentation, a lot of engineering that had gone into that." Now, Richardson said, the Navy must again have that kind of experimentation, engineering and prototyping to ready it for the next conflict — and it must get on that mission quickly to stay ahead of adversaries. "We do not want to be the second navy on the water with these decisive technologies: the directed energy, unmanned, machine learning, artificial intelligence, etc., you name it," he said. "That's the great challenge now: to get out, start prototyping, get at this pace, plus evidence ... to yield a relevant Navy that is ready to defend America from attack and protect our interests around the world." The admiral said that a knee-jerk reaction might be to cite Defense Department acquisition regulations, like DOD 5000, for inhibiting the type of rapid development, engineering and research he thinks will be needed to maintain maritime dominance. But he said that's not entirely correct. "I think a new set of rules would help," he said. "But this is, I think, a human problem at the end of the day. If we are all biased for action, if we all lean into this, we will get it done. There is nothing that will prohibit us or inhibit us from getting that done if we are all leaning in." https://www.defense.gov/explore/story/Article/1882567/naval-engineers-must-lean-in-to-advance-technological-agility/

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  3 mars 2021 | International, Aérospatial

  Australia makes another order for Boeing’s Loyal Wingman drones after a successful first flight

  The design will also be the basis of one of the U.S. Air Force's Skyborg entrants.