1st female heads Northrop Grumman LI division

There's a new face at top at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Bethpage facility - the face of a woman, the first time a female has headed the local operation, going all the way back to its beginnings as Grumman Corp. in 1930.

Patricia McMahon has been named as sector vice president and general manager of the Northrop Grumman's battle management and engagement systems division. The division is headquartered in Bethpage and includes facilities in Florida and Maryland. In all, the division employs about 4,300 people, including about 2,000 in Bethpage.

McMahon replaces Thomas Vice, who becomes a corporate vice president and president of Northrop Grumman's technical services sector in Herndon, Va. Vice had headed the battle management division since 2008.

Northrop Grumman, a Los Angeles-based aerospace manufacturer, has about 120,000 employees worldwide. In 1994, then-Northrop Corp. acquired Bethpage-based Grumman, which was then Long Island's largest employer and an icon in the region, having produced the lunar lander that took astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and '70s, and the Navy's famed F-14 Tomcat jet fighter.

But whether it was known as Grumman or Northrop Grumman, the local operation has until now been run by a man, starting with Grumman founder Leroy Grumman. McMahon is a lifelong Long Islander, born and raised in Copiague, and educated at Farmingdale State College and New York Institute of Technology. She is the chairwoman of the Babylon Town Planning Board. She joined Hazeltine Corp., now BAE Systems, in Greenlawn in 1981, before coming to Northrop Grumman in 2003.

"From my days at Hazeltine, I never wanted anything because I was a woman," McMahon said Friday. "I wanted it because I could do it as well as a man. I wanted it because I was qualified. I worked hard and paid my dues." She said her promotion "should show other women at Northrop Grumman or the [defense] industry that they too have an opportunity to move up if they're good at what they do."

McMahon said the division is pursuing several electronic warfare programs. "I believe we'll grow in the next few years," McMahon said. "We expect to hire in Bethpage as well as elsewhere."