Mark Aslett, President and CEO, Mercury Systems, Chelmsford
Photo/Matt pilon
Mark Aslett has steered Chelmsford military electronics manufacturer Mercury Systems through a difficult period. Hired not long before the onset of the 2008 recession, Aslett came to a company that, as he describes it, was having an identity crisis. It had diversified into health care imaging and software tools, and had even acquired a biotech firm. Aslett, an English native who worked in a shipyard before becoming an engineer and Harvard Business School graduate, entered the picture on the heels of two consecutive losing years on declining revenue and decided the company needed to refocus. Mercury sold off five divisions, revamped its management team and doubled down on its warfare electronics business strategy. Aslett sat down this month with MetroWest495 Biz to discuss the next challenge ahead for Mercury — sequestration.
What types of components does Mercury Systems make and how are they used?
When you boil it all down, basically what we build are supercomputer-type systems that process information coming from sensors on military platforms. We're providing the radar processing for the F-16, F-22 and F-35 (fighter jets). We're really at the heart of the most important unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, and of missile defense. The Aegis missile platform is one of our largest programs.
Why does the military care about “big data?”
There's a data explosion that's going on, and a lot of it is being driven by the number of sensors and the sophistication of the sensors on military platforms. A top Air Force official (Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula) went on record saying: “The military is swimming in sensors and drowning in data.” The challenge is how can you process those massive amounts of raw data into information that really matters to the warfighter? As an example, if you think of your iPhone, it has a camera on it that's in the megapixel range. The next generation of sensors that's coming out for some of the wide-area video surveillance for airborne platforms is a thousand-fold that. In one particular application we're involved with, it's collecting over 100 terabytes of data in a single mission.
What sorts of information are these sensors collecting that older sensors did not?
In the wars we've been fighting, it's all been about finding the bad guy. Video capability has an important role to play, but honing in on a single person in a very vast area is hard to do. So one of the things the military has done is added what's called signals and communications intelligence capabilities to the platforms. This is the ability to be able to intercept a bad guy's telephone call or radio transmission and then to be able to cue a diff type of sensor to be able to find that individual on the ground. We can actually help combine the different types of systems together to give better intelligence to the warfighter.
Mercury eliminated over 180 positions in the past six months because of near-term uncertainty in the defense market. What’s your strategy, given federal cuts?
I think we've laid out a strategy that's going to play out very well in the long term. We've had five years of great performance, and I think right now we're somewhat the victim of what's happened in D.C. But I do feel the business has stabilized and we're now headed in the right direction. I think we're just at the start of what will be a substantial change within the defense industry. Defense procurement reform is forcing the primes to outsource more work to companies like Mercury, who can do things more quickly and cost effectively. But they do it at a higher level of integration, meaning they don't just outsource at the (circuit) board level. They basically go to a best-of-breed company and say 'look we'd really like you to provide an end-to-end solution.' There are four or five programs over the next six to nine months that could be very important in terms of growing shareholder value. AMDR, the next-generation Aegis platform, could be a $350-million platform just to Mercury, and I think that's probably somewhat conservative.
How would you describe your management style?
I think my style is I'm very hard charging. I really love to win and to deliver results. The best way in which I think you get there is by choosing the best possible team that you can. The other thing I think is really important as the business grows is the culture and values. My former head of HR worked for (former General Electric CEO) Jack Welch for many years, and he really pushed me to write down what was important from a cultures and values perspective. So we've done that, and it's hanging on the wall of every conference room. It's the glue that binds an organization together. It's the framework by which the team makes decisions when the leadership is not around. n
This article was edited for length and content by Matt Pilon.
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