Lockheed Martin’s CEO flew 5,000+ hours as an Air Force pilot and Casey’s CEO fought in the Gulf War - now they’re running Fortune 500 companies

In his mid-twenties, Jim Taiclet was commanding multimillion-dollar aircraft on classified missions around the world—some of which came with an ominous send-off. “If anything happens, we never heard of you,” the mission briefer would tell him.

Today, the Air Force veteran runs Lockheed Martin , the defense giant ranked No. 61 on the Fortune 500, where roughly one in five of its 120,000 employees has also served.

And he’s not the only Fortune 500 CEO who learned to lead in uniform. This Veterans Day, several leaders have said the lessons they learned in the military—such as attention to detail, a willingness to take responsibility, and the composure to make decisions under pressure—still shape how they lead thousands of employees.

Jim Taiclet, the CEO of Lockheed Martin , grew up in a military family.

He went on to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy and served as a pilot from 1985 to 1991—logging more than 5,000 flight hours in a Lockheed C-141B Starlifter, including during the Gulf War.

Taiclet’s time in the military taught him what it meant to be trusted with enormous responsibility at a remarkably young age.

“In my mid-twenties, I was commanding multi-million dollar aircraft and experienced air crews on classified missions all over the world,” he said in a 2017 interview (at the time he was CEO of American Tower). “On a few of these, the mission briefer’s parting words were, ‘If anything happens, we never heard of you.’”

The experience also taught him how to lead people with different levels of experience, skills and seniority, while simultaneously performing under pressure when the stakes couldn’t be higher.

After leaving the Air Force, Taiclet entered the private sector as a consultant at McKinsey. He went on to hold leadership positions at Pratt & Whitney and Honeywell before becoming CEO of American Tower , a wireless communications infrastructure company, in 2004. In 2020, he was tapped to lead Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest defense contractors.

Today, roughly one in five of Lockheed’s 120,000 employees are veterans . But Taiclet has said he believes the value veterans bring extends beyond their technical expertise or familiarity with the defense industry—it’s also the leadership skills and sense of responsibility they develop through military service.

“If you learn those skills about responsibility, leadership by example when you’re in your 20s and you can actually take those forward your whole career,” he told CNBC in 2023. “The mission dedication that you have whether it’s Lockheed Martin or any other company—[if] you get a veteran on your team, they’re going to be committed.”