Ms. Marcia Holmes was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in August 2019 and serves as the Deputy Director for Hypersonics, Directed Energy, Space, and Rapid Acquisition, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology), Redstone Arsenal, Ala. In this position, Ms. Holmes supports the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office to rapidly and efficiently research, develop, prototype, test, evaluate, procure and field critical enabling technologies and capabilities, including long range hypersonic weapon systems, high energy lasers, cyber solutions and other innovative concepts that address near-term and mid-term threats, consistent with the Army’s modernization priorities.

Prior to her current position, Ms. Holmes served as the Deputy Director, Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center (CCDC AvMC) System Simulation, Software and Integration (S3I) Directorate. During her tenure, Ms. Holmes also served as Acting Director and led a workforce of approximately 5,600 government and contractor employees providing lifecycle software engineering, modeling and simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, software airworthiness, system security engineering and program protection capabilities to the Army’s missile and aviation communities, Missile Defense Agency, Space and Missile Defense Command, other Services and government agencies.

From 2013 to 2016, Ms. Holmes served as the Chief Engineer, Program Executive Office Missiles and Space (PEO MS). In this position, she held technical oversight and authority for 31 major defense programs spanning eight critical Army Project Offices across all phases of the acquisition lifecycle. These systems encompassed a broad portfolio to include the Aviation, Fires, Maneuver, Air and Space domains. Ms. Holmes orchestrated an integrated early evaluation of advanced threats against emerging weapon system designs and served as the Army representative to the Missile Defense Agency’s Joint Systems Engineering Team.

Ms. Holmes began her career as a defense contractor and she joined the government workforce with the CCDC AvMC in 2000. In this capacity, Ms. Holmes supported a wide variety of programs to include Patriot, Stinger, Sentinel, Surface-Launched Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (SLAMRAAM), Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) and Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD). She became a member of the Army Acquisition Corps in 2005.

Ms. Holmes graduated with honors from Athens State College with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and completed her Masters of Science in Program Management through the Naval Postgraduate School. She has achieved Level III certification in Program Management, Systems Planning, Research, Development and Engineering, and Production, Quality and Manufacturing. She is a member of the Honorable Order of Saint Barbara and has been presented with the Achievement Medal for Civilian Service, as well as the Commander’s Award for Civilian Service.