Bart LaGrone to lead Grumman program

If there is a Mr. Hawkeye at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s facility in Bethpage, it would have to be Bart LaGrone.

LaGrone, 43, was a flight-officer on the Navy's E-2 Hawkeye -- a surveillance aircraft -- for eight years, leaving active duty in 1997. That same year, he joined Northrop Grumman in Bethpage to work on the program to develop Hawkeye aircraft.

Last week, LaGrone was named to head Grumman's Hawkeye program, the company's largest on Long Island, employing about 700 people, the majority in Bethpage. Northrop Grumman has 1,600 employees on the Island.

"I bring a unique insight to this airplane," LaGrone said this week. His new title is a mouthful: vice president, airborne early warning and battle management command and control programs. He works under Pat McMahon, who runs the company's Bethpage operations. McMahon called LaGrone "a great choice" for the job.

LaGrone will be overseeing the company's efforts to build upgraded E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes. So far, the company has delivered nine to the Navy and has a firm contract to build another 20. In all, the Navy hopes to purchase as many as 75 of the Advanced Hawkeye airplanes, which act as traffic cops in the sky, directing friendly aircraft to hostile targets.

Design and engineering work is done on the Island. The planes are made at a company facility in St. Augustine, Fla. Various versions of the Hawkeye have been in Navy service since the 1960s.

LaGrone was a flight-officer on a Hawkeye in the mid-1990s, when the U.S. and allied countries declared a "no-fly zone" over Iraq to protect the Kurdish people in northern Iraq and Shia Muslims in the south.

There is nothing particularly pretty about the Hawkeye, a bulky-looking propeller-driven aircraft with a huge radar dome attached to the top of its fuselage. When LaGrone joined the Navy in the late 1980s, not long after the hit movie "Top Gun" -- about Navy fighter pilots and starring Tom Cruise -- came out, everyone wanted to be a fighter pilot, he said. But LaGrone did not have the 20-20 eyesight needed for fighter pilot training. He chose the flight-officer status on an E-2.

"You had to be able to make split-second decisions" about friend or foe, he said of the flight-officer's job.

LaGrone will play a major role in the aircraft's future, including the company's hopes to sell E-2 aircraft to allies overseas. Israel, Egypt, Singapore, Japan and other countries have purchased E-2s.

Now, company officials say, the United Arab Emirates is interested in buying four of the planes. LaGrone said if the UAE does, that could mean another 150 to 200 jobs for the company on Long Island. He said the UAE is to make a decision next year.