When Raytheon’s board of directors elevated Lynn Dugle to take over the company’s Garland, Texas-based unit in January, they chose a management expert whose work as recently as five years ago had nothing to do with military intelligence, spy satellite operations or identity tracking — the heart and soul of the business she now heads. Before joining Raytheon in 2004, Dugle was a division manager at ADC Telecommunications, a Minnesota-based supplier of business networking equipment.

Today, Dugle sees those years of non-intel work as a strength. She describes herself as a “catalyst” who can help Raytheon’s intelligence experts look at problems in new ways.

The board also chose Dugle for her international experience and eagerness to travel. She has gone to Iraq twice to assess how the company’s information systems are performing. She lived in Australia while working for ADC, and she traveled to Austria and Argentina to oversee production facilities there for General Motors.

As it happens, Raytheon is seeking to expand international sales of such products is its e-Borders information system, which coordinates data about the identities of immigrants and travelers for the British Home Office.

Dugle spoke with editor Ben Iannotta during the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Q. As the president of Raytheon IIS, are you undertaking any management reorganizations? Is IIS a unit in trouble?

A. We came out of 2008 growing our revenues by 14 percent. So we’re a solid organization.

That said, we have a lot of work to do in the current environment. We need to help our intel clients be relevant to the war fighter’s real-world needs. We need to execute absolutely flawlessly. This is not an environment where any mistakes can be tolerated.

And then, we want to grow. And that means pushing on things like water, weather and climate, integrated ground systems, international and domestic border security. Those are all areas that will mandate more time, more energy and more attention.

Q. Cybersecurity has been a hot topic here at the space symposium. What do you see as Raytheon’s potential role?

A. Raytheon moved early to set up a business unit, and I think we have a pretty unique perspective. But it’s an immature market. It’s nascent. Who’s going to buy? What are they going to buy? How are they going to buy it?

Q. But generally, you’d supply software?

A. We want to do the front-end vulnerability analysis. We’ve made a number of acquisitions in that area. When you start talking about “How do you protect?” you have to be able to do analytics around where your systems might be exposed. Some of that is hardware based and software based.

But more than anything, it’s really taking people who know the attack side, and being able to put that mirror image up, and use those skills to protect.

Q. I understand if you look at the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network, there are some 4,000 entry points into SIPRNET. Are you aware of the government’s effort to secure SIPRNET, and can you help out with that?

A. We certainly could because we could analyze networks and we can harden networks. One of the best guarded systems that we work with is our own internal system, and we put a lot of investment into hardening our own network. SIPRNET is a very complex, classified network, and we would be well-suited to do that kind of protection.

Q. The intelligence community is starting an information integration program led by Pres Winter of the National Security Agency. The idea is to coordinate information among the entire intelligence community, all 16 agencies. Do you know Winter or about him?

A. Yes, I know of him. We’ve got strong experience on data integration. Whether you’re talking about cyber, weather information, DoD or intel, historically those systems have been one data source: a picture or signal, and one ground station where you would process that data. The whole integration of that is to me the next frontier.

Q. It’s a terrible cliché, but that’s breaking the stovepipes, or linking the stovepipes, that people talk about.

A. I hate to say it but it is. We can do a lot more if we do take that integration mode. I’ll give you an example of where we’ve done that in a different arena. We do a system called N-DEx [Law Enforcement National Data Exchange] that brings together about 18,000 different law enforcement agencies, and lets them cross-share data. That’s another example where you’re getting things from different areas, putting them together, and dispersing them so more people can use them.

We saw similar phenomena in e-Borders, our U.K. program, where we have various sources of information, identity management and integration. We bring that all together, and then we have the various users, whether it be law, border, intel, being able to use the data.

Q. Is the government moving fast enough on integration and cybersecurity? I don’t see a bunch of cyber RFPs out there.

A. We’ll look back in five years and say we did not move fast enough. In fact, one of the speakers said that yesterday. But it’s a complex problem. I always use the visual analogy of a dam, and you’ve got your finger in different holes. You have these massive networks, and so you’re trying to protect various pieces. And what we really have to do, for ultimate cybersecurity, is divert the water from behind the dam. We’re in that maturing process to say, “What does offer us the best security?”

You will not stop every intrusion. You have to have a system that can quickly respond. That’s why we’re so committed on that vulnerability analysis. The government’s moving, they’re putting their money where their mouth is, and it’s certainly a priority in the new administration. It’s a tough, complicated threat that will take all of us to solve.

Q. That vulnerability assessment. Is that something you’re on contract to do? Is there an RFP out there?

A. We bought two companies — Telemus and SI Government Solutions — that do millions of dollars of business each year. I probably shouldn’t say the agencies that we work for currently, but in the classified environment, we do vulnerability analysis, and we’ve actually used those same services on our own Raytheon network.

Q. Have you talked to the Army about your proposed Universal Control Station for UAVs?

A. We have. In fact, we have lots of interest. Our challenge had been that there has not been a requirement. And so the time is now for that to really come in as a hard requirement and for us to supply it.

Q. You work on weather information systems, and weather is critical to mission planning.

A. You’re exactly right. One of the interesting things is that for UAVs, today, [operators] are not using weather information. Thirty percent of UAVs that we lose are due to not having access to that weather information. If you could integrate that, you would certainly save more UAVs and money, and that’s something we need to be helping our customers with in this economy.

Q. Would a UAV controller at a universal station get some kind of weather alert on the screen?

A. Probably it would look like this: You’d be on a universal control station and you’d be bringing weather information in, whatever the weather source, and feeding it to the operator. The ground station is actually the physical running of the asset. But you’d want to inform the ground operator in ways that they’re not informed today.

Q. I suppose you wouldn’t be getting a weather feed directly from a satellite. You’d get a meteorological feed.

A. Yes, you don’t want massive amounts of data pushed to people. If you’re flying over Iraq, you just want [weather for] Iraq, and just at a certain altitude.

Q. You’re the contractor for the Distributed Common Ground/Surface system Integrated Backbone, or DIB, that’s supposed to link intelligence stations. All the services are supposed to use the DIB, right?

A. There is a standard out there, and we’re all moving that way — some services faster than others.

Q. Do you know about the problem at the 2008 Empire Challenge?

A. I was at the Empire Challenge and I saw that. The Navy did not use the DIB and they did not come up on the system. I think it’s the age-old challenge of, “Do we want to get to the ideal, the perfect functionality? Or do we want to grow into it?” We have needs right now on the battlefield. What we’re trying to make sure we live and breathe each day is we’re going to be constantly extensible, because that’s what the world demands.

Q. What is it you provide on Accenture’s US VISIT information program?

A. It’s one of the key market areas where we’re growing: border security, identity management, immigration control. And so US VISIT is a border program that is checking entry into the United States. As you mature those systems, you’re using a lot more sophisticated identification means.

In other countries, they’re considering iris, facial construction, thermal image of the body to see if you’re sweating. We’re focusing on integrating all the different sources of information for identity management and immigration control. Again, this is not us being the fingerprint experts or the iris expert, but being able to take all of that information and use it.

Q. I’m curious how a company like yours learns about what’s happening with U.S. forces or coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A. We have multiple ways to get input. Raytheon is hugely supportive of our reservists, and so we have kind of a natural flow of people actually serving. We have multiple systems fully deployed in Iraq, so we get all sorts of information.

I personally have had the opportunity to go to Iraq twice and see how some of our equipment was working. We have ex-military officers in the company, and we are, of course, very responsive to the urgent needs statements coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Q. Are there any needs that come to mind, something that bothers you, that’s not being provided?

A. We do feel like if we can help with mobile, more real-time information, pushing information lower into the Army organizations, as their policies and procedures allow. We want to press right on the front edge of that every day.