by Dale Moore, Davidson CEO & President
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Thirty years ago, Davidson was founded on a simple idea. Engineering excellence paired with a deep respect for the warfighter’s mission, would always have a place in this industry. Three decades later, that idea is still the heartbeat of this company. But the market we serve has changed, and the way Davidson invests in its own future must change with it.
That’s why we built Davidson Labs.
The market is asking a harder question
For most of the last twenty years, the question our customers asked was, “Can you build it?” Today, the question is, “Can you show me you’ve already built it?”
Concepts, slide decks, and promises of what could be delivered if funded. That era is closing. Our customers across the Missile Defense Agency, U.S. Air Force, and entire Department of War are making decisions based on demonstrable capability. They want to see the prototype. They want to see the data. They want to see the architecture, working, in front of them.
Davidson has always delivered. What this moment requires is investing ahead of the requirement, not just in response to it. It also requires us to do something the defense industry has historically been bad at: making complex technical capability legible, accessible, and swiftly trusted by the people whose missions depend on it.
What Davidson Labs is
When we say ‘Labs,’ we mean a lab of the mind: a brain trust, not a building. We’re not talking sterile overhead lighting and a place to hang crisp, white coats. Labs is a posture, not a place. Davidson Labs is the engine for our purposeful technical investment and innovation. It’s the intersection at which that investment becomes something a customer, a partner, or a warfighter can see, touch, and trust; the discipline of investing in capability before a customer asks for it. It’s a standing investment in the people, the time, and the focus required to build real capability ahead of demand; an operating commitment.
Labs sits inside our operating model alongside three other elements. Our business units own current contract execution and customer relationships. Our innovation cells move fast inside targeted mission areas. Our communities of interest across AI/ML, cyber and quantum computing connect technical talent across our company. Labs is separated from program execution by design, so the work of building demonstrable capability is never traded away under the pressure of the next milestone.
Labs has a focused imperative: build real capability, before and during customer engagement, in the mission areas where Davidson has chosen to compete and win. Algorithmic warfare. Decision advantage. Secure information dominance. Systems engineering applied to the hardest problems in missile defense and space.
When we put Labs’ dollars and Labs’ people on a problem, it’s because we’ve decided that solving it makes Davidson harder to replace and makes our solution the obvious choice. That’s the bar.
What Davidson Labs isn’t
I want to be just as clear about what Davidson Labs isn’t, because in this industry the word “lab” can mean almost anything, and we’re choosing it deliberately.
- It isn’t an R&D sandbox. Labs’ work isn’t curiosity-driven exploration. Every Labs investment is tied to a real program need, a real system gap, or a real operational requirement we expect a customer to fund or field.
- It isn’t a skunkworks bolted onto the side of Davidson. Labs is part of Davidson. Its output flows into our business units, our innovation cells, and our customer-facing teams, not into a vault marked “maybe someday.”
- It isn’t a marketing construct. We’re not relabeling existing program work. Labs has its own scope, its own leadership, and its own accountability to outcomes.
- It isn’t a replacement for the disciplined program execution that’s defined Davidson for thirty years. Our business units are the engine of the company we already are. Labs is how we build the company we intend to be.
- And it isn’t a place where capability gets built and then waits to be discovered. Too many good ideas in this industry die on a shelf because no one connected them to a mission, a customer, or a moment. Labs exists, in part, to make sure that doesn’t happen at Davidson.
That clarity matters. For our customers, for our partners, and for our employee-owners, who deserve to know exactly where the technical investments of this company are going and why.
Leadership
Standing up Labs the right way required a specific kind of leader. Someone technical enough to build it, strategic enough to land it, and credible enough with both warfighters and engineers to bridge the two. I’m proud that Nathan Klose has joined Davidson as Vice President of Davidson Labs in early June.
Nate comes to us from i3, where he served as Chief Creative and co-founded the company’s Technical Innovation Council, scaled emerging technologies, and grew their IRAD program. Over nearly two decades, across defense, advanced research, and brands like NASA, Mercedes-Benz, and Disney, he’s built a reputation for closing the gap between what an organization can do and what its customers and partners are ready to receive. He’s a TEDx speaker on the nature of creativity, a longtime Huntsville technologist, and the rare leader who can read a schematic and read a room, alike, with equal fluency. That’s exactly the seat Davidson Labs needs filled.
“Emerging technology is rapidly applicable, slowly adopted,” Klose says. Strategy in our industry usually sounds like good a story about the future, the warfighter’s risks mitigated and resolved like magic, via technology that feels far off, with an impact often touted before it’s been shown. Future stories about future warfighters. I’d rather build that capability now, bringing novel solutions left-of-schedule, and get honest about what it can do so we can get focused on what it will do. That’s how we give our customers value at a velocity even hype can’t keep up with.
“The first twelve months, you’ll see us focused where the fight is actually decided – algorithmic warfare, supply chain logistics, decision advantage, cyber and EW, quantum, AI-based wargaming and simulation, secure information dominance, and more – and you’ll see us doing it out loud. We’re not going to disappear for a year and surface with a white paper; we’ll be alongside our customers and partners the whole way, showing real work, adjusting in the open. Come along for the ride, y’all.”
Nate’s job, and our job around him, is to make sure Davidson Labs earns the trust of the warfighter community the same way Davidson has. One demonstrated capability at a time.
Why now
This is Davidson’s 30th anniversary year. It’s also the year our employee-owners take a more direct stake in the company’s future through our Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Those two facts are connected. The technical capabilities we build now, in Labs and across the business, are what create long-term value for the people who do the work. Purposeful innovation is how an employee-owned company compounds.
