General Dynamics UK appoints Steve Rowbotham as COO
Further strengthening its commitment to the UK market and enhancing export opportunities from the UK to international markets, General Dynamics will continue to have two primary lines of business here - a C4 business for military, public safety, and security opportunities and a Land Vehicles business which is currently delivering the Specialist Vehicle programme to the UK Ministry of Defence.
The C4 business line in the UK will work more closely with its General Dynamics C4 Systems sister companies resulting in the creation of General Dynamics C4 Systems International, whilst UK land vehicle activity is being aligned with General Dynamics Land Systems. This new approach will see closer cooperation between the businesses to the benefit of all their customers.
In his role as COO, Steve Rowbotham (right) will oversee the combined activities of General Dynamics in the UK. The appointment of Rowbotham as COO completes an executive level reorganisation following the retirement of Dr. Sandy Wilson earlier this year.
On accepting his new appointment, Steve Rowbotham said: “The United Kingdom is a priority market for General Dynamics. We will continue to operate from the UK, with the same footprint as we have today, to support our UK customers. We will also continue to use our UK business as a base from which we can export capability in partnership with the UK Government.”
As part of the reorganisation, General Dynamics UK also has expanded its board of directors. Chaired by Lord Peter Levene, the board includes Sir Andrew Cahn and Dr. Sandy Wilson, who continues to serve following his retirement as president and managing director. Chris Marzilli, president of General Dynamics C4 Systems and Gary Whited, president of General Dynamics Land Systems, have been added to the board.
Steve Rowbotham brings more than 30-years’ experience of engineering, programmes, operations management and business development in the defence industry to the role of COO at General Dynamics UK. He joined General Dynamics UK as vice-president in 2006 to form the Advanced Projects & Technologies group which successfully competed in the FRES UV competition in 2008 and subsequently won the contract to deliver the Specialist Vehicle (SV) family of vehicles in 2010.
He has also been responsible for all Research and Development activities within General Dynamics UK as well as the Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) Vehicle Conversion activity run out of the DSDA site at Ashchurch.
Steve began his career as a design engineer at Marconi Radar Systems in 1979, and worked on numerous armoured vehicle and other defence programmes leading up to his appointment as
Engineering Director of Marconi Land and Naval Systems in 1998.
Following the acquisition of Marconi Electronic Systems by British Aerospace in 1999, Steve was appointed Engineering Director of Royal Ordnance (RO) Defence. In 2004 Steve was appointed Managing Director for what had then become BAE Systems Land Systems Munitions.
