Posted on 10/20/2019 10:52:08 AM PDT by LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
CPI Aerostructures Inc.’s stock climbed Thursday after the company announced that it had won a contract worth as much as $48 million to re-wing Cold War-era A-10 “Warthog” jets, which the Pentagon previously had marked for retirement.
Vincent Palazzolo, chief financial officer of Edgewood-based CPI Aero, said in an email that the aerospace manufacturer has been seeking to add 10 to 15 employees to its workforce of 305 and that an additional 10 to 15 would be needed when A-10 work ramps up in 2020.
Shares of CPI Aero climbed 2.4 percent Thursday to close at $8.19. The stock was trading at $7.21 12 months ago.
In August 2014, CPI Aero took a $44.7 million noncash charge related to plans by the Pentagon to retire the A-10s, which were manufactured on Long Island.
“This award builds on our decadelong experience in manufacturing wing structures for the A-10 and cements our role as a key supply chain partner to Boeing on this aircraft to 2030 and beyond,” Douglas McCrosson, president and chief executive of CPI Aero said in a statement.
In its fiscal 2015 budget, the Air Force had estimated that retiring the A-10 would let it save $4.2 billion over five years.
Military campaigns in the Middle East, however, put the A-10 back to work. The ground-attack jet with a seven-barrel Gatling gun was designed to defeat Soviet tanks in Europe, but also proved adept at providing air support to ground troops seeking to defeat ISIS militants in the Middle East.
Under the new indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity agreement with prime contractor Boeing Co., CPI Aero will deliver structural assemblies and subassemblies for the wings of the A-10. The first delivery is expected in late 2020.
In August, Boeing announced it had won an Air Force contract with a maximum value of $999 million to re-wing up to 112 A-10s.
More than 700 A-10 Thunderbolts were made by Farmingdale-based Republic Aviation Co. (later to become Fairchild-Republic Co.).
The A-10s nickname sprang from an Air Force major who said the jet was “ugly as a warthog,” according to an account by Elliot Kazan, who died in August 2018. The Dix Hills aeronautical engineer was the project manager overseeing the jet’s production.
The Rainbow in
The Photo is a
Sweet Touch but
I’d like Hulka to
Share more about
The Warthog!
Go on Hulka
Tell us More.
It is a Fascinating
Aircraft,
Thanks for Your Service Sir!
:)
Will do...thank you!
...”But what I don’t understand is why they can’t just retool and produce more of the same thing. If it works it works.”
Well, I worked for many years on Block 30 F-16Cs and Ds...
they were great airplanes but were overtaken by later Block F-16s that the U.S. Air Force would not buy (someting about
not wanting “legacy aircraft...or something”) The F-16 is still in production ... up to Block 50 or 70 or whatever...still as potent as ever but,no, we can’t have
old-fashioned legacy aircraft for the USAF ....
I think they were developed initially as Russian tank-killers.
I was hoping you’d join the thread!
Excellent. The Air-force has been trying to get rid of these superior support planes since the start. At one point they even floated the idea of giving them to the Army!
We are likely to need the A-10s a whole lot more then the multi bilion dollar high tech fighters and bombers the AF keeps fantasizing about
Sign me up. I will work for a $10 a day plus food
lol
LOL!!
Does it still not have radar warning? It’s really good in air space where you have air superiority, other than that...
FReegards!
On the original aircraft the pilot sits in a titanium ‘bathtub’ which protects him from most small arms fire. We've got all kinds of head-up-the-ass environmental regulations and who we can buy titanium regulations that would make producing anything today a nightmare.
One more example of how we have allowed liberal idiots to destroy our society and abilities.
Bathtub was made of titanium. Really cool.
Apparently you cannot penetrate the brain dead Air Force clown posse head that the Cold War is over and you are going to be doing a lot more ground support not much Top Gun for the foreseeable future.
Apparently you cannot penetrate the brain dead Air Force clown posse head that the Cold War is over and you are going to be doing a lot more ground support not much Top Gun for the foreseeable future.
Erm... the assumption that infantry can defend itself easily with man portable ATGM isn’t really all that valid any more. As has been demonstrated in Syria and Chechnya as well as Lebanon, you now need to saturation attack an APS equipped tank to get a hit. The Chechens found that they had to fire at least six heavy ATGM to have any chance of getting even one hit. The Israelis with their APS equipped Merkavas found that it took even more RPGs to get past the APS.
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