SAIC naval business taps new leader

Science Applications International Corp. earlier this week named Josh Jackson senior vice president for the naval business unit, making him responsible for a roughly $1 billion portfolio.

Jackson, who has spent about two decades at SAIC, most recently was senior vice president and operations manager for the company's Navy and Marine Corps information warfare operation.

He told Inside Defense in an interview Wednesday his team recently finished a strategic planning exercise to help it determine where the Navy and Marine Corps is headed and how SAIC can position itself to help.

Jackson said his unit will focus on helping the services accelerate their IT modernization efforts.

Even as the Biden administration is expected to weigh the proper size of the naval fleet and what percentage will be unmanned, Jackson said modernization will remain a top priority.

"Whether the percentage of unmanned vessels is going to be targeted at 25% or more or 15%, either way there's going to be a massive development effort for unmanned systems," he said. "There's got to be a lot of development in autonomy in applying AI and machine learning to actually guide those unmanned systems."

Jackson said SAIC is also expecting growing use of other transaction authorities and for the military to increasingly purchase technology as a service.

"I think you're going to see more of that across the DOD," he said.