Dr. Mitch Stevison
Vice President, Air & Missile Defense Systems, Raytheon
Dr. Mitch Stevison is vice president of the Air and Missile Defense Systems (A&MDS) product line, which consists of the Standard Missile-3, Standard Missile-6, Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), Redesigned EKV (RKV) and Israeli Cooperative Programs, as well as Advanced Kill Vehicles and European Missile Defense efforts. Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN), with 2015 sales of $23 billion and 61,000 employees worldwide, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Before his current role, Dr. Stevison was the director of the SM-3 program, where he was responsible for the development, testing and production of all variants of the SM-3 missile portfolio.
Prior to joining Raytheon in 2011, he was the director of the Targets and Countermeasures Program for Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. He led an organization of over 600 employees in Huntsville and Courtland, Alabama; Denver, Colorado; Sunnyvale, California; and Ampthill, United Kingdom; responsible for providing the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) with realistic, threat-representative target missiles and reentry vehicles to test the Ballistic Missile Defense System. Under Dr. Stevison’s leadership, the program achieved a 100% mission success record in target system launches and reentry vehicle performance requirements.
Previous to working for Lockheed Martin he was vice president of programs and later of operations for Miltec Systems Division, a Ducommun Company, in Huntsville. He was responsible for the cost, schedule and performance of programs providing programmatic, scientific and engineering services to NASA and the Department of Defense, including services supporting test execution and launch operations for major MDA programs, as well as divisional strategy and new business development.
He retired from the U.S. Army in 2005, following an accomplished 20-year military career that included positions as: joint test director for U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll, Reagan Test Site, Republic of the Marshall Islands, including the range lead responsibility for MDA Ballistic Missile Defense System testing; executive officer for MDA Ground-based Midcourse Defense Program and program executive officer for Tactical Missiles; and, executive officer for the deputy for Systems Acquisition and commander of 95th Maintenance for the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command.
Dr. Stevison earned a Ph.D. in business administration from TUI University in Cypress, California, a master’s degree from Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, and a bachelor’s degree from Athens State University in Athens, Alabama.