CPI Aerostructures will deliver structural assemblies and subassemblies for the wings of the A-10. The first delivery is expected in late 2020.
Boeing awarded 48$ Million A-10 Warthog Re-Winging contract to CPI Aerostructures the company announced on Oct. 17, 2019.
Vincent Palazzolo, chief financial officer of Edgewood-based CPI Aerostructures, said that his firm has been seeking to add 10 to 15 employees to its workforce of 305. An additional 10 to 15 would be needed when A-10 work ramps up in 2020.
As reported by Newsday, in August 2014, the company 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 Aerostructures said in a statement.
Pentagon previously had marked for the A-10 retirement. In its fiscal 2015 budget, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) had estimated that retiring the A-10 fleet would let the service save $4.2 billion over five years.
Military campaigns in the Middle East, however, put the A-10 back to work.
Introduced into the USAF aircraft inventory in 1976, the venerable A-10 is the only production-built aircraft for close air support (CAS). The aircraft was made to fly close to the ground in support of friendly ground troops, drop heavy loads of weapons, attacks armored vehicles and tanks, and can be called in to attack enemy ground forces. In fact, thanks to its capabilities the Warthog proved to be the perfect aircraft to provide air support to ground troops seeking to defeat ISIS militants in the Middle East.
As we have previously explained, Boeing will continue its legacy of A-10 Thunderbolt II sustainment work under an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract award from the USAF, with a maximum ceiling value of $999 million. CPI Aerostructures will deliver structural assemblies and subassemblies for the wings of the A-10. The first delivery is expected in late 2020.
The A-10 Thunderbolt II, which was nicknamed the “Warthog” because of its bulky and ungainly disposition.
“There was a major in the Air Force . . . . He saw the first couple of ones, he said, ‘Geez, that thing is as ugly as a warthog.’ And it stuck,” Elliot Kazan, the project manager overseeing the jet’s production who died in August 2018, told Newsday in 2003.
Photo credit: U.S. Air Force
