Ralph Guevarez: Hello, and welcome to Mercury Now, a podcast series brought to you by Mercury Systems. I am your host, Guevarez. And today we are live from the grand opening ceremony of the Custom Micro Electronics Packaging and Silicon Integration Center in Phoenix, Arizona, where there's a lot of excitement surrounding the facility, not just because of the official opening, but also due to a recent announcement by the DoD that directly involves what Mercury's doing here.

Ruben Gallego: When we were in state government, our biggest problem was we were only focused on buildings and tourism, and that was our leading economy here. And we were talking about back in the day, this stage should be the state for tech. Being here, as long as I've had and visiting you guys long have, you guys have always been at that forefront. You guys have been kind of an indicator of where Arizona is going. So I just want to thank you.

Ralph Guevarez: Joining me at this time as Tom Smelker VP and GM of Mercury's Microsystems Business Unit. Tom, great to see you again.

Tom Smelker: It's great to see you again, Ralph. Glad to have you in Phoenix.

Ralph Guevarez: My pleasure. My pleasure. Now, Tom, this ribbon cutting ceremony has been two years in the making. Please tell us how rewarding it is to finally see it come to pass.

Tom Smelker: It's so rewarding for everyone in this facility. So two and a half years ago, we started on this journey to really bring the state of the art 2.5D microelectronics to this facility and to onshore here in the United States. And we've done that through a pandemic, and it's really exciting to have a ribbon cutting and celebrate this great success.

Ralph Guevarez: Thank you for that, Tom. Now it was recently announced that Mercury Systems was selected to provide secure packaging for the DoD SHIP program. Could you please explain to our viewers how Mercury was able to put themselves in such a unique position to play such a pivotal role in a future looking program like this?

Tom Smelker: Absolutely. So the DoD SHIP program, what a great program, stands for state-of-the-art heterogeneous integrated packaging. That's exactly what our facility that we had the ribbon cutting on today is all about. So the leadership and foresight that has been driven from through the Navy on this program is really exciting and all the capabilities it brings, and it really aligns with Mercury's heritage, our pedigree. We bring state-of-the-art microelectronics and make them profoundly more accessible to our customers. And we do that through collaboration. We do that through partnering.

 So we're really that channel with our these great Silicon Valley companies that we work with, innovating leading edge technologies, working with our defense customers, innovating leading edge systems for our defense. And we're that channel between the two, collaborating with both and really bringing that packaging piece of it that's trusted, it's secure and enabling next generation of capabilities for our customers. So it's extremely exciting. It's revolutionary for what Mercury's doing, but the SHIP program I would say is revolutionary for what defense microelectronics is all about. So it's exciting to be part of such a great opportunity.

Ralph Guevarez: That's great. Tom, thank you so much for your time. It was great having you on the show again. Congratulations on the ribbon cutting once again.

Tom Smelker: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Ralph, and look forward to doing this in the future.

Ralph Guevarez:  Absolutely. Absolutely. This is Ralph Guevarez from Mercury Now coming to you from the microelectronics facility in Phoenix, Arizona. Signing off. Have a good day.