WASHINGTON — Leadership of Boeing's Defense, Space & Security (BDS) unit will be leaving St. Louis, Missouri, for the Washington, DC, area at the start of 2017, although the vast majority of St. Louis employees will be staying at their current location.
BDS has been based in St. Louis since it merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, whose corporate legacy in the region goes back to the late 1930s.
The initial shift will consist of about a dozen individuals from the senior leadership team, most notably BDS head Leanne Caret. Over time, another 50 or so individuals will move from St. Louis to the capital region — technically Northern Virginia, but just a stone's throw away from both the line to DC and the Pentagon.
The news was first reported by Defense One and confirmed to Defense News by Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher.
"It's a very clear reflection of how Leanne operates," Blecher said when asked the reason for the move. "She is all about personal engagement whenever that is possible with senior leaders of the customer, whether in the Pentagon, in NASA, folks on the Hill, however you define customers and decision-makers. So this allows her to be that much closer to those people."
Blecher said he understood that the initial reaction to the announcement would be negative in the St. Louis community, which for years has lived under questions about Boeing’s future in the region, given questions about F-15 and F/A-18 production timelines.
However, he noted that about 14,000 jobs will remain in St. Louis versus the less than 70 that would be moving to DC, and compared the situation to when Boeing’s corporate headquarters moved from Seattle to Chicago, noting the Seattle location now has more employees than it did at the time of the Chicago move.
"We certainly understand and are respectful of the surprise that people in the St. Louis area will have, but all I can do is reassure them with the facts, that the company’s commitment to that community is vibrant today and will be strong and vibrant years from now," Blecher said.
Speaking to Defense News at the Reagan National Defense Conference on Dec. 3, Caret expressed confidence that the F/A-18 line would expand out "well into the mid-2020s and beyond. ... I feel very comfortable with where we are with this line."
It has been a year of corporate shifting for BDS, starting with the surprise decision to replace BDS head Chris Chadwick with Caret in March. Then in November, the company announced it would be closing several sites and eliminating 500 jobs over the four-year period.
Boeing has also announced it would be standing up a Global Services unit, based in Dallas, Texas, which would handle a mix of commercial and defense-related maintenance and upgrade work.
"We have continued to focus on our affordability journey, we are continuing to look at all of our sites, looking at where we can create the most synergy," Caret said in the Dec. 3 interview. "Our customers are still operating in a more-for-less environment and we need to continue to take the positive steps to deliver them affordable products. And that requires us to look hard at ourselves, not only at how we're organized but how we actually execute the business."
Aaron Mehta was deputy editor and senior Pentagon correspondent for Defense News, covering policy, strategy and acquisition at the highest levels of the Defense Department and its international partners.
