Greg Lancaster began his government career in 1995 as an electrical engineer at the Naval In-Service Engineering Command, East Coast.

Thirty-one years later, he is executive director of that command’s successor.

Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic announced Sept. 23 that Lancaster had been appointed to the Senior Executive Service as the command’s executive director. In that job he provides technical leadership, strategic planning, resource allocation and execution oversight for more than 4,100 federal civilian and military personnel, according to the command.

NIWC Atlantic is a Navy engineering and acquisition command for information warfare: the radios, networks, cyber defenses and surveillance systems that link ships, aircraft and vehicles into joint forces. It is headquartered in Charleston and reports to Naval Information Warfare Systems Command in San Diego. Most of its workforce is in Charleston, the command’s website says, with other major offices in Virginia, Louisiana, Florida and Washington, D.C.

Inside the fleet’s networks

Before his promotion, Lancaster was a senior scientific technical manager and head of the Fleet Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) and Readiness Department in Charleston. The department engineers, tests, installs and sustains the command, control, communications, computer and intelligence systems the fleet uses, according to a 2024 department briefing. Its work includes network security and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance programs.

He led more than 1,400 engineers, scientists, logistics specialists, technical specialists and financial managers who carried out more than 150 projects a year, according to the command.

That October 2024 briefing, prepared for contractors, put numbers on the department. It listed 1,488.5 government and military full-time positions, 180 programs and projects, and $1.667 billion in total obligation authority for fiscal 2024. The slides set out three priorities: speed to capability, quality on-target delivery and what the department called fleet-centered design, focused on the needs of sailors.

From Stuttgart to Charleston

Lancaster’s career has included time overseas. From 2001 to 2003, he was lead project engineer for the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Europe office in Stuttgart, Germany. There he managed network infrastructure design and installation, handheld device deployment and internet access projects in Kosovo and Bosnia, according to NIWC Atlantic.

In 2009, he served as chief engineer for the center’s National Cyber Reconnaissance Systems division.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and earned an MBA from The Citadel in 2009. In 2016, he completed the Senior Executive Fellows Program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

A regular in front of industry

NIWC Atlantic spends heavily with private companies. His department alone obligated about $824 million through purchase orders in fiscal 2024, according to a CHS Business Report tally of division figures in the same briefing. Lancaster has spent years explaining the Navy’s needs to those companies.

He briefed the Charleston Defense Contractors Association’s industry symposium in October 2023 on naval objectives, NIWC Atlantic reported, and brought in members of his department to describe upcoming requirements and procurement opportunities. He led a department session at the October 2024 symposium. For the association’s Eastern Defense Summit in December 2025, the agenda listed him as moderator of a panel on shipbuilding as a strategic imperative.

On Oct. 14, three weeks after his appointment was announced, he was on the program at the association’s 75th symposium at Trident Technical College to give an introduction and command update as executive director.

Taking over at a fast-moving time

Lancaster steps in as the Pentagon and the Navy push to buy and field technology faster.

In January, when NIWC Atlantic released the first contract opportunities from its new Rapid Capabilities Office, the command’s acting executive director, Erick Fry, said the offerings aligned with Department of War and Navy imperatives “to place the entire acquisition system and defense industrial base on a wartime footing.” The command stood up the office on Oct. 23, 2025.

The command also matters to the state’s economy. A May 2025 study by the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business estimated that NIWC Atlantic’s activity in South Carolina supported 9,912 jobs and $2.1 billion in economic output in fiscal 2024.

The Sept. 23 announcement did not include comments from Lancaster.