Executive Spotlight: Chris Bishop, Chief Growth Officer of HII Mission Technologies

Chris Bishop, chief growth officer of HII’s Mission Technologies division, recently spoke with ExecutiveBiz regarding the company’s recent growth initiatives, such as the recent DMATS award win, and how the influence of emerging technologies is impacting the government and federal landscape in today’s day and age during the latest Executive Spotlight interview.

You can read the full interview with Chris Bishop below.

ExecutiveBiz: Please share a little background on your recent journey to HII, your current role, and what you hope to accomplish.

Chris Bishop: “I joined Alion Science and Technology two years ago—before it was acquired by HII in 2021. During the transition, I was offered the chief growth officer opportunity for the newly integrated Mission Technologies division.

The combined capabilities offer an amazing portfolio of depth and breadth. As a leading-edge technology integrator with a legacy of building the largest, most survivable platforms across the globe, I am very excited about all the ways we can accelerate national security.

Mission Technologies is at the forefront of the most interesting aspects in today’s fast and ever-changing marketplace. We’re looking at emerging technology development and maturation as well as the integration and transition of those technologies into the mission operational environment.

My role is to partner with our business groups and leverage capabilities across the business to help solve some of our customers’ most significant problems.”

ExecutiveBiz: What can you tell us about HII Mission Technologies’ recent growth initiatives and how you’re driving value for your customers through contract awards, acquisitions and other aspects across the federal sector?

Chris Bishop: “We’ve really hit the ground running. HII’s second quarter revenues were up significantly over the same period last year, thanks in large part to growth in our division.

Already in the third quarter, we’ve announced the award of four task orders with a potential combined value of more than $1 billion, including a Decisive Mission Actions and Technology Services contract worth $826 million.

The DMATS award is a great example of how customers are using innovative acquisition techniques to solve some of their most challenging problems.

In some cases, the technology isn’t what’s most troubling to our customers. It’s actually getting access to it by way of acquisition. The DMATS contract offers a broad set of solutions and capabilities for mission partners across the Department of Defense and critical components of the fourth estate entities and combatant commands worldwide.

The true purpose of the contract is really to look at innovation through new and non-traditional cases specifically for the purpose of countering and deterring current as well as potential and emerging global threats.

I believe we’re going to see more innovative contracting mechanisms to ensure our warfighters can get the kind of solutions they need very, very quickly. We’re pretty excited about this, and I believe our customers will be very excited to use this as well.”

ExecutiveBiz: You mentioned the DMATS award. Where else do you see growth for Mission Technologies?

“Overall, HII is well-positioned to deliver and integrate enabling technologies that complement our platforms and support an all-domain force.

These advanced solutions include autonomy; artificial intelligence and machine learning; big data; cyber and EW as well as advanced modeling and simulation; and unmanned platforms for manned/unmanned teaming.

The Mission Technologies division is delivering these tech enablers and is the fastest growing part of HII’s portfolio.”

ExecutiveBiz: With the influence of emerging technologies impacting every aspect of business, how has HII been able to drive digital transformation efforts to stay ahead of innovation in the federal landscape for yourself and your customers?

Chris Bishop: “We’ve had a number of conversations with customers—even in the past few months—about speed. Our customers simply can’t wait 18, 24 or 36 months for a solution these days. We need to deliver disruptive capabilities for the combatant commanders in a matter of months. The best solution that arrives too late is not a solution.

HII has the digital practices and the kind of innovative computing and infrastructure to ensure we can deliver those capabilities at the speed of relevance.

It is a major undertaking to develop innovation around defense acquisition and advanced technologies. That is our focus at HII, combined with offering deep domain expertise and understanding of the hard problems. It really comes down to being able to do these things at a rapid pace.

We believe our division operations are perfectly aligned with this direction. We are very optimistic about the opportunities, but we want to ensure we maintain that incubation mindset to be able to prototype and demonstrate the technology to see if it can actually solve a problem.

I like to see what DoD and the services are doing right now with digital transformation. It’s not just around the bigger initiatives. It’s around prototyping how to be able to model the virtual area as well as the physical aspects. That’s a really important consideration for where the business is heading.”

ExecutiveBiz: Any closing thoughts?

Chris Bishop: “These are truly exciting times for Mission Technologies. Our customers are facing some of the most complex and rapidly evolving challenges right now, and we are ideally positioned to meet them, as reflected in size and criticality of our pipeline and a record number of proposal submissions in 2022.

In fact, our pipeline is larger than ever, which creates significant momentum for us in the second half of the year. So stay tuned!”