Top 25 Execs to Watch in 2019

David Wajsgras, vice president, Raytheon Co., president Intelligence, Information and Services

It has been a great year for Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services. The company delivered outstanding financial results, demonstrating record-setting performance, and it expects 2019 to be a solid year.

This month, the U.S. Air Force will continue to use Raytheon’s ground launch and checkout system, GPS OCX, to guide its next-generation GPS satellite into final orbit. It’s notable the GPS OCX system also achieved the highest level of cybersecurity protections of any Defense Department space system ever delivered.

In addition, Raytheon secured several strategically important contracts in 2018, including:

• A national-scale cybersecurity award from a key ally in the Middle East;
• Two major contracts that could total more than $600 million with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency for advanced data automation, analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities;
• A $500 million Cobra Dane radar sustainment contract;
• Two training awards with the U.S. Army – The National Training Center ($160 million) and the Enterprise Training Service Contract (shared IDIQ up to $2.4 billion); and
• It began work on a $600 million strategic software program, where the company is updating and sustaining software on strategic assets for the U.S. Army.

“From a technology standpoint, I’m proud to share that our new Low Power Radar, known as Skyler, was named one of the top technologies by Popular Science magazine, for its many applications including tracking Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the National Airspace System,” said David Wajsgras, vice president, Raytheon Co., president Intelligence, Information and Services.

Looking back over the last couple of years, the biggest challenge Wajsgras said is “addressing the increased velocity at which we need to operate — the speed at which we need to deliver our product and solutions to our customer.”

“We’ve been transforming ourselves; working more like a Silicon Valley company, adopting commercial technologies and practices, such as DevOps, agile and cloud computing, in order to deliver software, systems, services and products considerably faster than in the past,” Wajsgras said. “We are reducing the time it takes to deliver capabilities from years to months and weeks. I’m pleased with how our team has adapted and become more nimble.”

The cornerstone technologies center around automation, analytics and cyber. The company also uses cutting-edge capabilities, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, immersive technologies, such as virtual reality and augmented reality, and several commercial cybersecurity tools through multiple partnerships established in 2018. It invested in a commercial small satellite company, Hawkeye 360, for enhanced data analytics for our government customers.

Why Watch:

“We had a great year, so we are going to build on that momentum while finding new ways to ‘Break Through,’ which is our mantra,” Wajsgras said. “Our strategy has not fundamentally changed. I would say that my focus area is to continue to infuse a ‘commercial culture’ into the business, and provide clarity of objectives and strong accountability.”

The company sees quite a few opportunities to support its customers’ missions and goals: cybersecurity, space systems, multi-domain command and control, airspace modernization, and high-consequence training, Wajsgras said.

“We are well positioned to bring the most advanced capabilities and technologies to our customers in the DOD, intelligence community, federal civilian markets and international markets,” he said.