A General Dynamics Corp. shareholder meeting in May turned contentious when an antiwar activist confronted CEO Phebe Novakovic over the company’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other repressive governments. “You ought to have some more moral reflection about how you earn your billions of dollars,” the activist said.

After offering to sit for a “principled conversation,” Ms. Novakovic calmly defended the company’s mission to support the policy of the U.S., which is “just and fair and in our interest.” She added that everything General Dynamics makes, from nuclear-armed submarines to armored vehicles, is designed to “deter evil—and there is evil in this world.”

“ ‘Our customers are best served by us being quiet and doing our job well.’ ”

Ms. Novakovic, 63, who has run General Dynamics since 2013, keeps a low profile. Because her Fortune 100 company has one primary customer, the Department of Defense, she says she doesn’t see much upside in “proselytizing publicly” about their products and services. “Our customers are best served by us being quiet and doing our job well.”

But in a rare interview over Zoom from the company’s headquarters in Reston, Va., Ms. Novakovic is eager to reassert the fundamental patriotism of her job. “It is our moral imperative to support our nation and to support our nation’s allies in the work they do to keep democracies safe,” she says. She adds that she may have personal concerns over this or that policy, and the company is not “consulted on the end use” of the equipment it sells. But she argues that it is the duty of General Dynamics to help defend the liberties we too often take for granted. “That’s principles, not politics.”

Ms. Novakovic’s patriotism was forged during the Cold War. Her father, a Serbian immigrant, served in military intelligence as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed mostly in West Germany with his family. Living there while growing up was formative for her. The country was still relatively poor, Ms. Novakovic recalls, and the “gratitude for what we had done in World War II was still palpable.” She felt proud knowing “that if anything happened the American military would be there to help you.” She was also grateful to be a citizen of a country where an immigrant who works hard can get ahead: “This nation was made great and will continue to be made great by immigration.”

Phebe Novakovic wanted to serve her country but sensed the military wasn’t the right fit: ‘I intuitively knew I didn’t do well with rules.’

Phebe Novakovic wanted to serve her country but sensed the military wasn’t the right fit: ‘I intuitively knew I didn’t do well with rules.’

Photo: Stephen Voss for The Wall Street Journal

After graduating from Smith College with a degree in history in 1979, Ms. Novakovic wanted to serve her country. She sensed the military wasn’t the right fit—“I intuitively knew I didn’t do well with rules”—so she joined the CIA. She offers scant details about her years working for the agency, but says that she “loved” the experience. “I felt like I was doing something important,” she says. “It was a calling.”

While in the CIA, Ms. Novakovic met her first husband, Michael Vickers, an ex-Green Beret, and they married in 1985. With the Cold War winding down, they both sought MBAs at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1988. Ms. Novakovic believed a career in business would be better for raising a family, but finding work was hard. She “desperately” wanted a job in the steel trade, eager to work in an industry in transition. But when she came to an interview visibly pregnant, she was told “We’re not hiring” inside a minute. Other rejections followed. “You learn to be resilient,” she says.

Ms. Novakovic finally got a job at the federal Office of Management and Budget in 1992, and swiftly rose to manage President Clinton’s budget for national security. Divorced and raising three young daughters, she recalls these years as a bit of a blur: “I’d fall into bed exhausted, wake up exhausted, but keep going because I had no choice.” She has plenty of empathy for working mothers, but when female executives ask for advice on finding balance, she is quick to say, “Well, you’re not going to find it.” In 2001 she married David Morrison, a former lobbyist for Boeing.

After working in the Pentagon for several years, Ms. Novakovic began

eyeing national-security jobs in the private sector. Among the CEOs she had met, Nicholas Chabraja of General Dynamics stood out for being both “superb” and a former trial lawyer, which boded well for someone with Ms. Novakovic’s “iconoclastic” background. She joined the company in 2001.

Mr. Chabraja, who steered General Dynamics in a time of shrinking defense budgets, mentored Ms. Novakovic and made her senior vice president in 2005. But when he retired as CEO in 2009, his job went to Jay Johnson, a former Chief of Naval Operations. Ms. Novakovic managed the company’s marine systems, became president and chief operating officer, and then got the CEO job herself in 2013.

At the time General Dynamics was losing money—an unprecedented $332 million in 2012. To right the ship, Ms. Novakovic took a $2 billion write-down for 2012, blaming some ill-conceived acquisitions, and began repairing what she calls a “fractured leadership team.” To improve morale and cohesion, she crafted a corporate ethos—“a more powerful word than ethic, which really means the fundamental moral character of an organization”—that prizes transparency, honesty and trust. She also fired “everyone who couldn’t abide.”

This ethos, she says, helped General Dynamics through the pandemic. When the federal government deemed the company’s manufacturing operations critical, Ms. Novakovic decided that if line workers and shipbuilders had to report for duty, her leadership team would show up, too: “In a crisis there’s nowhere for weakness to hide,” she says. New protocols, staggered shifts and protective equipment minimized workplace transmission of Covid-19; in October the company reported that less than 2% of its 100,000 employees worldwide had been infected. General Dynamics also advanced over $2 billion to suppliers to limit disruptions. Ms. Novakovic decided to participate in this interview, she says, to thank publicly her employees “who stood their watch.”

“ Ms. Novakovic concedes that the military-industrial complex has inefficiencies but says that the costs of deterring threats and protecting Americans are necessarily high. ”

The U.S. will spend over $740 billion on defense in 2021, more than the next 10 countries combined. Ms. Novakovic concedes that the military- industrial complex has inefficiencies but says that the costs of deterring threats and protecting Americans are necessarily high. Submarines, for example, “are securing our borders every day in ways you don’t even know because they can’t be found.” In 2019 General Dynamics secured a $22.2 billion multiyear order for nuclear-powered, fast-attack submarines, the largest contract the Navy has ever awarded. The smallest submarines the company makes are the length of football fields.

Ms. Novakovic crisply declines to answer questions about American politics and foreign policy: “I have no intention of compromising or embarrassing my customer in any way.” Despite seemingly dramatic shifts in policy from one administration to the next, she notes that “there’s a fundamental consistency about the importance of national security.” The company’s contracts tend to outlast presidential terms.

But she clearly favors American engagement with the world. “Great nations survive when they have lots of allies, despite how difficult they are, despite how unfair or unequal in contribution they may be,” she says. It’s “hubris,” she adds, for a major international power to ignore what’s beyond its borders. “No nation is an island, successfully.”

Corrections & Amplifications
Phebe Novakovic is 63 years old. An earlier version of this article incorrectly gave her age as 64. (Corrected on June 25)