Tony Moraco Talks SAIC’s Planned Engility Buy, Army’s Mobile Protected Firepower Program

Tony Moraco, CEO of Science Applications International Corp., told Defense News in an interview published Monday that the planned acquisition of Engility fits into SAIC’s strategy and provides an opportunity to gain access to market channels that SAIC lacks.

Moraco, a five-time Wash100 winner, cited Engility’s “multi-intelligence agency portfolio” and space capabilities as factors that drove SAIC to make a buyout offer for the former.

“Instead of buying a number of smaller concentrated firms, we could get a couple agencies in one larger deal,” he said of Engility’s intell portfolio.

He noted that defense will still have the largest share of SAIC’s portfolio at 55 percent once the firm completes the transaction and discussed the increasing focus on diversification as some major contractors divest parts of their services segments.

SAIC plans to bid for the U.S. Army’s Mobile Protected Firepower program and Moraco said the company considers MPF as an extension of its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and command-and-control integration.

“We do see it as a viable area, and I would characterize it as the next tier of complex technology integration, system integration,” he said of the MPF program.