“So, Technologies and Combat are simply a question of mix. And I suspect Combat will quickly return to its normal operating leverage.”

In context

“of that over time. Operator: And your next question comes from the line of Sheila Kahyaoglu from Jefferies. Sheila Kahyaoglu: Howard, exactly what Louie said, and then, thank you for being such a great colleague and a teacher to me and all those around you, so thank you. Phebe or Jason, whoever, on the Defense business, when you look at your 2023 guidance, Defense growth is up solidly up 5% for the year versus the 9% growth you did in the first half. But this is not necessarily leading to operating leverage with margin contraction of 40 bps and flat operating profit. So, how do you think about the return to operating margin expansion either on a total company level or a segment basis? It seems like Technologies is more temporary, Combat mix maybe continues for some time. Phebe Novakovic: So, Technologies and Combat are simply a question of mix. And I suspect Combat will quickly return to its normal operating leverage. The Marine Group has significant supply chain challenges that have impacted for the Virginia-class in particular. That’s going to take some time to resolve. We’ll talk about that in a little bit more detail. So, as I noted, we expect slow quarter-over-quarter margin growth in the Marine Group, perhaps an occasional perturbation by quarter, but slow and steady improvement over time. Operator: And your next question comes from the line of Ken Herbert from RBC Capital Markets. Ken Herbert: Congratulations, Howard. Phebe, I just wanted to dig into Marine again a little deeper. The full year guide implies a pretty significant deceleration in growth into the back half of the year. Two questions, really. First, as we go back six months, you were talking about a much more conservative outlook for”