Huntington Ingalls CEO: Long-term impacts of pandemic remain unclear

The chief executive of Huntington Ingalls Industries said today the defense industry still doesn't know the longer-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic as contractors have acted to meet short-term milestones.

Speaking at a virtual conference hosted by George Mason University's Center for Government Contracting, Mike Petters said that when employee attendance dropped, "we prioritized near-term events at the expense of long-term events."

"I suspect our suppliers have been doing the same thing," he added. "So, in the near term by and large a lot of the milestones have been met, and we don't yet know what the long-term impacts are going to be and what those tradeoffs were."

Petters noted that depending on how long the pandemic continues, "we may not ever know."

He added that Huntington Ingalls is starting to think about the path forward when the country moves out of the pandemic -- though he noted he doesn't know when that will be.

"I think you're going to see acceleration of productivity -- I'm pretty optimistic about that," Petters said. "I think there’s going to be a hunger . . . basically to catch up."

"I can't say when, but that's kind of the way we're positioning ourselves -- accelerate out the other side of this," he continued, noting the contractor is talking about this plan with its suppliers.

Petters also said HII has "matured" its policies meant to give employees flexibility during this time. He told conference attendees the "biggest innovation" within the last six weeks have been "the ability to start testing folks we're putting in quarantine."

"The ability to test people and move them out of quarantine in a prudent way has turned out to be a pretty successful piece of it," he said.