William McCormick
Gabe Camarillo, senior vice president of the Army Business Unit for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), recently spoke with ExecutiveBiz regarding SAIC’s reorganization of the business unit, the advancing capabilities and modernization initiatives for the service branch, recent contracts to expand the company’s HWIL, engineering and support services as well as SAIC’s establishment in the Huntsville market and goals for the rest of 2021.
“I’m excited about our Army portfolio outlook, not just with these four wins, but other recent wins across the portfolio. We’re building on great success at the end of 2020, and we’re going to continue that in 2021.”
ExecutiveBiz: In the last six months since becoming SVP of Army business, how do you feel about your work in the role and how SAIC has advanced its capabilities for the service branch, including the $830 million Army aviation modernization contract from Feb. 2021?
“I was asked to lead part of a reorganization of the Army Business Unit as senior vice president at SAIC. In this role, I oversee a P&L organization for the entire Army account, which is about $1.2 billion of annual revenue for different Army customers.
A large proportion of that is in the Huntsville market and is based on our support to the S3I directorate within the Aviation and Missiles Center, which supports Army modernization in these portfolios.
The recent S3I contract wins have done two things for us. First, it continues to anchor us and solidifies our position as one of the leading system engineering companies in the Huntsville market, supporting that particular set of Army customers, such as PEO Aviation and PEO Missiles and Space, through the Aviation & Missile Center.
Second, it is really important that it continues to extend our relationship with the Huntsville market. By working with our teammates — a hundred small, medium and large companies — we’re continuing to provide a broad range of innovative capabilities and areas of expertise to Army customers that utilize our contract vehicles in Huntsville.
We look forward to working as a team to continue building up the Huntsville market’s talent base and continue to solidify our existing leading role in providing engineering services for customers.”
ExecutiveBiz: More recently, SAIC announced a $3.6B contract to also provide HWIL services for SAIC and how it will continue to drive the Army’s aviation modernization efforts?
“The Army is constantly modernizing its aviation platforms and invests a lot of its budget into the addition of new capabilities in its aviation and missile defense portfolio, which is all geographically located in the Huntsville market.
This most recent contract for the $3.5 billion will provide a vehicle to provide us full lifecycle support to all of those modernization efforts, at least for the portions that are done through the Aviation & Missile Center lab.
These activities span the full lifecycle of these Army systems, to include analyzing requirements for aviation systems and subsystems, helping to design and modify subsystems and integrate them onto Army platforms. This includes systems integrated onto legacy aircraft, like the Blackhawk, Apache and Chinook, the design of new subsystems; cybersecurity for the software; and software engineering for the embedded software.
Then, of course, the development of advanced models and simulation helps the Army understand how those subsystems and systems will perform together in operational environments.
What’s really interesting about this most recent contract is that it also extends and builds upon our work in the area of virtual and constructive training. How does that apply to all of this aviation modernization?
It allows us to support the Army through the Army Game Studio, which develops games with game-based applications, virtual training pools, and other simulators that allow the Aviation & Missile Center to provide critical training to soldiers.”
ExecutiveBiz: In addition, SAIC received another $800M contract to provide engineering and professional support services to the Army Combat Capabilities’ DEVCOM AvMC. Can you tell us about the importance and impact these contracts will have on Huntsville and the bigger picture for SAIC?
“We’re really excited about the modeling and simulation systems engineering contract for $800 million with S3I. This contract carves out a particular area of work in which we have a tremendous amount of expertise, and that’s advanced modeling and simulation used throughout the life cycle of not just aviation platforms but missile defense platforms and a whole host of others.
Modeling and simulation allows us to run virtual simulations to see how different systems interoperate, how they perform at a system level as part of the fielded platform or combined within a battlefield formation relying on disparate platforms and systems working together.
Why are modeling and simulations important? It’s because the Army is heading towards a Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) environment where simulations are interconnected. Sensor and system interoperability is critical to success on the battlefield.
Of course, a key part of that is the modeling and simulation work that enables those systems to talk. This contract allows us to build our expertise, and to bring our talent and tools to this critical area the Army will continue to rely on.”
ExecutiveBiz: As SAIC continues to roll into the spring of 2021, what are your goals for the rest of the year and beyond?
“I’m excited about our Army portfolio outlook, not just with these four wins, but other recent wins across the portfolio. We’re building on great success at the end of 2020, and we’re going to continue that in 2021.
Personally, I look forward to getting past quarantine and being able to travel to all the different sites and have more face-to-face engagements with our customers as conditions permit. But in terms of the business, I couldn’t be more proud of the SAIC team, especially the capture team down in Huntsville and what they’ve been able to accomplish with this cycle.”
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