Duane Hawkins President, Defense and Space Spirit AeroSystems

Duane Hawkins is senior vice president; president, Defense & Space for Spirit AeroSystems. In his role, he leads Spirit’s growing defense and space business. Prior to this role, he served as senior vice president; president, Defense and Fabrication in 2019. From September 2017 to January 2019, he served as senior vice president and general manager of Boeing, Defense, Business/Regional Jet Programs and Global Customer Support at Spirit AeroSystems. 

Hawkins joined Spirit in July 2013 as senior vice president of Operations with responsibility for Spirit’s Supply Chain Management, Fabrication, Global Quality and Operations, including global footprint, Manufacturing Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Lean and Tooling. Hawkins is a 35 year veteran of the aerospace industry, having worked in executive positions for Raytheon Missile Systems, Defense Research Inc. and General Dynamics in operational roles spanning program management, manufacturing engineering and supply chain. 

He joined Spirit after more than a decade at Raytheon Missile Systems, where he most recently served as vice president, deputy, air warfare systems, responsible for more than $2.4 billion sales and total P&L for Navy and Air Force Programs including Tomahawk, AMRAAM, Sidewinder AIM 9X, PAVEWAY, MALD, JSOW, Maverick, GRIFFIN, HARM, SDB II development and others. 

Before joining Raytheon, Hawkins was president of Defense Research Inc. He also served as factory manager for Hughes Missile Systems/ General Dynamics and chief of manufacturing engineering for General Dynamics Missile Systems earlier in his career. 

Hawkins holds a Bachelor of Science degree in manufacturing/industrial engineering from Hawkins also sits on the board of directors of the American Red Cross Kansas Region. Duane currently sits on the board of directors of Nammo, Inc, USA. He is also a member of the Collier Award selection board.