Katie Bigelow
CEO
Mettle Ops, Madison Heights
Employees: 62
2024 Revenue: $30M
It only seems natural that Katie Bigelow, who grew up as a self-described “Air Force brat,” would end up not only serving her country in uniform, but in business.
The CEO of Mettle Ops in Madison Heights leads a company that designs, integrates, and manufactures advanced warfighter solutions.
“Initially, we were going to be a program management company,” Bigelow says. “Now I have six program managers and 26 engineers on staff. We’re really an engineering company now.
“Our engineering team can design anything for an Army ground vehicle, be it for powertrain, mobility, or survivability. We also do kitting, packaging, and manufacturing, and help the government with supply chain obsolescence.”
Mettle Ops began in 2013, which was one of the most challenging years of Bigelow’s life. In addition to starting the company that year, she was diagnosed with cancer and lost one of her nine young children.
As a result, she didn’t land her first contract until the third quarter of 2015. “It took me a long time to recover from that year,” she says. “This whole thing started while daydreaming about a side gig while the kids were napping.”
Mettle Ops has since evolved into a $30-million enterprise with 62 employees serving the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, and it has amassed more than $200 million in government contracts focused on soldier survivability.
The company’s current biggest project — $87 million over three years — is focused on developing reactive armor tiles. It’s a passive system that hangs on the outside of heavy armored vehicles that have explosives packed into them.
Once a rocket-propelled grenade penetrates the tile, its explosives detonate outward, preventing the projectile from penetrating the hull and injuring the soldiers.
“This is a major manufacturing contract for us,” Bigelow says. “We use suppliers from all over Michigan, and some in other parts of the country.” Assembly and kitting is done in Madison Heights, and the explosives are added in Kentucky.
A current Mettle Ops engineering project is a generic test turret on which the government can integrate equipment and test it to make design decisions, while the OEMs are developing the rest of the vehicle.
“We’re pretty technology agnostic,” she says. “Instead of selecting the technology that’s most profitable for us, we can choose the technology that’s best for the vehicle platform and the warfighter.”
Bigelow’s life as an Air Force brat started with her birth in Maine. Her family then moved to Nebraska and stayed there while her father took posts in Korea and Washington, D.C. Eventually, they ended up together in Colorado, where she graduated from high school.
Her father retired from the Air Force as a colonel, then worked on flight navigation and space and missile defense systems.
Shortly after graduating from high school, Bigelow enlisted in the U.S. Army as an Arabic linguist, and spent time at Fort Hood in Texas and Bosnia. With not much need for Arabic speakers in Bosnia, she became a warrant officer in the aviation section and flew Black Hawk helicopters for seven years, leaving the service as a chief warrant officer 2.
Her overseas service included a tour in South Korea and in Iraq between 2005-2008 where she performed medical evacuation missions during that conflict.
Fast-forward to Madison Heights, where Mettle Ops is evolving its business to keep up with trends on the battlefield.
“The ground vehicle community is very important to us, but we’re also looking to expand into aerospace and defense,” says Bigelow, who in the past year has started a drone company, named Celestus, by buying another firm’s drone-related intellectual property.
Bigelow says drones can be driven to a launch point on the battlefield and, once in the air, they can drop a payload “like a toaster” when it’s near or over a target.
Most drone parts, however, are manufactured overseas and not in friendly countries, and can’t be used in defense applications, she notes, adding, “So we have our own drone motors that are made entirely in the U.S.”
Celestus currently is developing Class 1 drones, which carry payloads of up to 2 pounds. In addition to ordinance, other drone payloads can include cameras and radio jamming equipment.
“We also have speed drones, which go pretty fast — but I can’t say how fast,” she says.
In addition to protecting today’s troops, Bigelow says she’s committed to empowering women, veterans, and disadvantaged groups. She says she creates opportunities and strives to serve as a role model for future leaders.
Whether it’s designing equipment for ground vehicles or drones, Bigelow says the mission of her company reflects her time in uniform.
“My job as a medevac helicopter pilot was very closely connected to soldiers living or dying, so I’m very personally connected to that, still.”
