Gabriella DeCesare 
Henry Choi serves as vice president of growth and strategy at HII Mission Technologies. In his role, Choi is responsible for driving business growth, strategy and customer engagement across HII’s full-spectrum cyber, electronic warfare and space portfolio, supporting mission-critical capabilities designed to address rapidly evolving multi-domain security threats.
Choi joined HII in 2022 with 30 years of experience in the government services national security sector. He brings extensive expertise in business and technical leadership, strategic planning, capture strategy and domestic and international business development. His experience spans key national security areas including cyber and electronic warfare, space, airborne systems and command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Before joining HII, Choi built a career supporting defense and intelligence customers through leadership roles focused on advancing operational and technology-driven solutions for complex mission environments. His background combines technical knowledge with strategic business development expertise supporting government and defense stakeholders.
Choi joined ExecutiveBiz for an interview on HII’s business philosophies and how the company addresses data and national security concerns in the AI era.
ExecutiveBiz: What are HII’s core values? How do you think these values translate into continued success and growth in the GovCon market?
Henry Choi: HII’s core values are integrity, safety, respect, engagement, responsibility and performance. They’re the foundation of how we operate across every mission set. These values translate directly into our continued success in the GovCon market. They drive disciplined execution, attract top technical talent and reinforce the trust we’ve built with our customers over decades.
ExecutiveBiz: What is HII’s philosophy for sustained growth and innovation, and how does the organization position itself to evolve with customer and mission needs?
Choi: Sustained growth and innovation at HII starts with people and purpose. Our mission is national security, and if we stay grounded in that purpose and empower our people to bring their best ideas forward, growth becomes a natural outcome.
We are also prioritizing advancements in electronic warfare, command and control, common vertical launch systems and high energy laser systems, supported by a modular open systems approach. This approach enables interoperable and rapidly upgradable architectures that evolve with mission needs and accelerate capability delivery across all domains. To get there, we are investing in our workforce and increasing IRAD funding for both hardware and software products to drive innovation and speed to market.
ExecutiveBiz: One of the most pressing concerns about data in today’s digital landscape is the sheer volume that needs processing and sorting. What do you see as some of the more viable solutions to tackling this challenge?
Choi: One of the biggest challenges our customers face isn’t just collecting data, it’s making sense of it at mission speed. A few approaches are proving most effective. Data prioritization ensures high-value information gets the most computing, while low-value data is archived or discarded. Edge and distributed processing reduce the burden on central systems by filtering data closer to its source. At the same time, AI-driven automation helps manage tagging, duplication and routing at scale, keeping pipelines efficient.
Modern architectures like data fabrics and meshes also play a key role by decentralizing ownership and reducing bottlenecks, while real-time analytics allows organizations to extract insights immediately and avoid storing unnecessary data.
Two of our products, IONIC and LeviathanAI™, bring these elements together, enabling integrated ingestion, analytics and governance across edge, cloud and on-prem environments so organizations can focus on actionable intelligence instead of raw volume. LeviathanAI builds on that foundation by applying advanced analytics, machine learning and AI-driven reasoning to extremely large and complex datasets. It helps analysts and operators identify patterns, anomalies and emerging threats that would be impossible to detect manually.
ExecutiveBiz: From your perspective, what are our highest priorities and the biggest challenges we’re facing right now in National Security?
Choi: Our highest national security priorities focus on sustaining technological advantage, protecting critical information, integrating modern capabilities and countering adversaries that rely on asymmetric tactics to impose disproportionate costs on the United States. Achieving this requires strengthening cyber and electromagnetic resilience, reducing cost-per-engagement, accelerating decision-making through integrated data and AI and ensuring a secure, transparent and resilient defense supply chain.
Capabilities such as Enhanced-High Energy Laser systems provide a game-changing advantage on the modern battlefield by dramatically lowering per-shot costs compared to traditional kinetic interceptors like missiles. This cost-efficiency makes directed energy systems especially effective against low-cost, high-volume threats such as drones, rockets and mortars.
GRIMM, as an advanced electronic warfare capability, enhances the ability to detect, locate and counter jamming, spoofing and other spectrum-based interference that adversaries use to create asymmetric effects and disrupt operations.
The greatest challenge is executing all of this at speed, modernizing without disrupting ongoing operations, integrating data across classification boundaries, staying ahead of rapidly evolving cyber and EW threats, and reducing supply chain vulnerabilities. The objective is to deliver mission-ready capabilities that lower engagement costs, strengthen resilience and preserve the United States’ operational and decision advantage in contested environments.
