Stephen A Henry is currently an acquisition consultant providing tailored training and support to enable programs to effectively plan and start programs right. After retirement from Northrop Grumman Steve became a professor at the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) preparing senior acquisition executives to lead and manage complex and technically challenging programs. At DAU he was instrumental in the development and delivery of the Key Leadership Development Program for the Missile Defense Agency.
Steve was previously the director of Engineering for the Northrop Grumman Information Systems sector’s Command and Control Division. Mr. Henry has more than 43 years of experience in designing, implementing, testing and managing large programs. He served 28 years the Air Force retiring at the rank of Colonel in 2000. He is a graduate of the USAF Test Pilot School and flew the first flight of the B-1B in 1984. Key acquisition and engineering assignments include A-10 Program Manager, B-1 Program Element Monitor, Executive Officer SAF/AQQ, Deputy Commandant of USAF TPS, Joint Stars Director of Engineering, and System Program Director for Global Air Traffic Operations and Mobility Command and Control (GATO-MC2) program office. As a Northrop Grumman Director of Engineering, Mr. Henry led a group of senior engineers who helped apply effective systems engineering to start-up programs right. He also served as the Northrop Grumman Information Systems, Systems Engineering Center of Excellence lead, was a key member of the corporate affordability working group, and a leader on creating and implementing MOSA on programs. He provided significant leadership and capture support to major programs such as E-10 Battle Management Command and Control, CANES, Tanker, JLTV, AOC, and Joint STARS RECAP. In these roles he significantly improved the quality of system engineering personnel development and engineering practices. He is the past Chairman of the NDIA Systems Engineering Division and supports numerous NDIA working groups to support DoD. He is the primary author of the NDIA 2023 paper “MOSA Implementation Considerations, Information Needs and Metrics”. In 2015 he was named the winner of the National Defense Industrial Association’s Lt Gen Thomas R. Ferguson, Jr. Systems Engineering Excellence Award.
Mr. Henry is the recipient of the Air Force Material Command Chief Engineer of the Year, Air Force Association, Executive Division, Program Manager of the Year, and Armed Force Communications and Electronics Association’s International Award for Excellence in Information Technology awards. Under his leadership, the GATO-MC2 program office was named best major program office at Electronic Systems Center for three consecutive years. Mr. Henry earned his Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University and Masters of Science in Systems Management for the Air Force Institute of Technology.