Northwest Aerospace News August | September Issue No. 4 | Page 40

T
here are everything from niche defense contractors to
rocket motor test companies to drone builders and opera-
tors, he said.
“I’m always surprised at these little towns with these mom-
and-pop shops that are doing high-quality precision work
for the aerospace industry,” Cairns said. “They typically
don’t want to grow, because then they couldn’t shut down
during elk-hunting season.”
CM isn’t exactly mom-and-pop. Its roots are more like
father and son.
As Ken tells it, his late father — Richard Johnson — start-
ed the business about 30 years ago. The elder Johnson had
been a procurement officer for the U.S. Air Force. After
he retired from the military, he took a job in supply chain
management for an Ohio-based aerospace design and man-
ufacturing company. 
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NORTHWEST AEROSPACE NEWS
After a half-dozen years in that role, father and son put their
heads together to chart a new path: Instead of just sourcing
parts, why not fabricate them? The family moved from Ohio
to Missoula, because that’s where Ken’s mom grew up, and
they started fabricating steel and non-ferrous landing gear
components in 1984.
Today, the company’s roughly two dozen employees put out
some 70,000 parts a year. Most are spares — CM fabs parts
for venerable war horses like the U.S. Air Force KC-135s
and U.S. Navy EA-6B — but it also supplies Boeing’s St.
Louis assembly lines with parts for F-16s and F-18s.