Former soldier heads firm that manages manufacture of critical parts for military

BOULDER – Sometimes the little things make all the difference.

An insightful Boulder company is using American machine shops to build critical components that help the country’s military efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict.

Aerospace Manufacturing Services manages the manufacture of parts for U.S. military hardware. Using a base of six machine shops spread from coast to coast, the company contributes to weapons like the Mark-19 grenade launcher, the M-249 squad automatic weapon and the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, all of which are used in ground operations overseas.

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Unlike most defense contractors, Aerospace Manufacturing has just two employees. Jack Cahn, a former machine shop owner, runs the company with the help of his wife and partner, Barbara Morse, formerly a sociologist at the University of Colorado.

“This model is very common among tier one government contractors,” Cahn said. “This is what Lockheed and Northrop Grumman and all the biggest defense contractors do. They bid on government contracts and then program manage the work done by subcontractors and deliver a final product to the government. The difference is that they’re just much bigger.”

While the company is certified to the highest quality ISO 9001:2000 and AS 9100 standards, the job is personal for Cahn, a former Special Forces soldier in the U.S. Army.

“I feel a responsibility to make sure that every solider who touches a weapon I’m involved with has the best equipment in their hands,” Cahn said. “A dentist from Toledo or an auto body welder from Boston who is serving a commitment overseas couldn’t care less about next-generation weaponry. They just want the machine gun in their hands to fire when they’re engaged in battle. It’s my responsibility to make these parts perfect, and I take a lot of pride in it.”

Cahn has extensive experience manufacturing machine parts. He started doing business in Boulder in 1982 as the owner of Boulder Sports Car Center and Twin Cam Restoration, where he restored exotic sports cars for customers nationwide. He later opened a well-known machine shop in Longmont – Colorado Aerospace – to manufacture parts for clients like Raytheon, Boeing and Jet Propulsion Labs.

To capitalize on his experience in manufacturing and government contracting, he founded Aerospace Manufacturing Services in December 2003. All the work is considered “restricted” rather than classified, and falls under the federal government’s International Tariffs and Regulations Act, meaning the parts are required to be manufactured in the U.S. Aerospace Manufacturing subcontracts work through six machine shops in six states including Collins Machine and Manufacturing Inc. in Boulder. Cahn and Morse manage all the government paperwork and oversight procedures, ensuring that the red tape doesn’t get in the way of his subcontractors’ efforts.

“I have a lot of respect for the folks that can build these parts,” Cahn said. “What I’ve done is bring in work that they wouldn’t normally get. Most of the machine shops I deal with haven’t had any previous experience with government contracting, and the learning curve would be steep if they were to try it on their own. The government gets the benefit of someone who can supply the documents and program management required to ensure delivery and quality. At the same time, these machine shops aren’t competing for work, which gives them tremendous confidence.”

While the parts manufactured may be relatively small, they can mean life or death to a solider. Many of the parts Aerospace Manufacturing manages are for pre-Vietnam weapons or machinery for which replacement components are critical.

“Original equipment suppliers want to sell new machine guns, not replace the parts,” Cahn explained. “We have a dwindling industrial base to resupply many of America’s critical fighting weapons, and that industrial base is not growing because it’s a difficult area to penetrate in order to become an approved supplier.”

It’s also a long-term commitment. It can take more than a year for a government contract to be finalized and up to 300 days between the awarding of a contract and the delivery of an item, but the rewards are significant.

Aerospace Manufacturing recently was awarded contracts upward of $1 million to provide critical housings on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and frames for the Hellfire missile.

The next area of growth for Aerospace Manufacturing is in the reverse engineering of hard-to-find parts, military hardware that is in danger of becoming obsolete. In some cases, the original equipment manufacturer no longer exists, and Aerospace Manufacturing will cast new parts based on the original equipment but will then be awarded an exclusive contract to supply those parts to the government.

“It’s going to be pivotal,” Cahn said of the new project. “I’m trying to become a sole source on components for which there is no current source. That will bring even more work back to the U.S. generally and back to companies in the American heartland specifically.”

Started with less than $20,000, the company has been awarded and has managed 11 government defense contracts and secured more than $3 million in gross sales. Cahn anticipates more than $3.5 million in government contracts by the end of 2006. He expects to maintain the size of the company until 2008, when anticipated sales more than $6 million will force Aerospace Manufacturing to grow its infrastructure in order to maintain quality of service and take on new work.