As the director of the Advanced Technologies Office, LaCroix is responsible for interaction and cooperation with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport Division, and with the Naval War College to strengthen HII’s ability to translate innovative ideas and technologies more quickly into operational capabilities for customers. This position also supports experimentation, exercises and analytic efforts through internal research and development across the company.

“Jim brings more than 35 years of leadership and technical expertise gained at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center,” Donnelly said. “His extensive experience with unmanned undersea vehicles and torpedo development provides him with a deep understanding of the challenges of integrating unmanned system technologies into the fleet. Jim’s knowledge of our customer and industry will add tremendous strength to our advanced technologies group, and we are very excited to have him join our team.”

LaCroix started his career at NUWC as a college intern in 1980. Upon graduation in 1983, he accepted a full-time position in NUWC’s torpedo department, where he spent a majority of his career involved in all phases of the torpedo acquisition process, including developing acquisition and contractual documentation and the design, development and testing of torpedo programs. He also spent three years as a line supervisor of the unmanned undersea vehicle branch. For the last 10 years, he provided direct support to the Navy’s Undersea Weapons Program Office in a variety of torpedo acquisition roles.

LaCroix earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Southeastern Massachusetts University (now University of Massachusetts Dartmouth).