2022 HENAAC Awards

Education: Master’s, Mechanical Engineering, MIT; Master’s, Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, MIT; Master’s, Operations Research, Naval Postgraduate School; Bachelor’s, Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Berkeley; Bachelor’s, Material Science, University of California, Berkeley.

 Rear Admiral David Goggins is a submariner through and through.  He’s served as a member of the crew, led a new construction platform at the industrial build facility, and overseen repairs to in-service submarines.  And now, as the program executive officer for attack submarines, he’s in charge of all submarine acquisition and the sustainment of the submarine fleet currently in service.

With more than 16,000 companies across all 50 states, over 350 of which are identified as critical vendors needing dedicated support and attention, the Submarine Industrial Base is the backbone of the Navy’s future fighting force.  At the peak of his career, RADM David Goggins was selected to lead this massive operation. His current responsibilities put him at the head of the most complex and technically challenging acquisition enterprise in the U. S. Navy.

RADM Goggins has been the U.S. Navy’s go-to officer for all of its first-of-class roll-outs for the last 25 years.  He is the only person to have been selected to lead the two largest submarine acquisition programs back-to-back: the Virginia-class program, a 48-ship class with a $299 billion budget; and the upcoming Columbia-class, a 12-ship class valued at over $110 billion. 

RADM Goggins also led the waterfront project team for the construction, testing, and delivery of the fast attack submarine USS Jimmy Carter, the Navy’s top of the line platform with the most advanced capabilities of all submarines in service still today.

Because U.S. national defense strategy and naval operations requirements are rooted in the absolute need for technology superiority, RADM Goggins is also charged with forging and maintaining relationships with private industry and academia.  The technology that emerges from these collaborations is foundational to the U.S. Navy’s ability to maintain an incontestable advantage over its adversaries, and few have been more supremely prepared for this role than RADM Goggins.