To ensure that we are continuously driving operational excellence and growth, we conduct real-time analysis and business optimization across our manufacturing operations.
Advancing in Our Operational Growth Journey
Our ability to deliver consistently strong operational performance serves as a foundation under our Pivot to Growth strategy to promote ongoing reinvestment back into the Company. We are making steady investments in our talent, systems and infrastructure that strengthen our team, enhance execution and drive additional capacity. These investments also promote growth and efficiency across our operations, enable advances in new product introductions aligned with our customers' needs and industry drivers, and bolsters our ability to capture new positions on both current and next-generation platforms across our A&D and Commercial businesses.
Top: Curtiss-Wright’s highly-trained employees, shown here in one of our recently expanded U.S. manufacturing facilities, are developing small-form-factor solutions designed to meet the growing demand for rugged, high-performance tactical communications.
Bottom: Curtiss-Wright employees, including Sr. VP and General Manager David Micha, celebrate the opening of one of our new facilities in France supporting our position as a leading provider of advanced aircraft arresting systems equipment to global defense markets.
Enhancing Our Operational Growth Platform
The Operational Growth Platform ensures continuous focus across the organization to drive our commercial and operational excellence initiatives. We are generating meaningful operational savings to support Curtiss-Wright's future growth and efficiency by accelerating throughput, creating improved absorption and employee efficiency, reducing waste, and continuously investing in and implementing new processes, systems and tools to optimize our operations. Further, we are leveraging our strong market positions and unique capabilities in support of company-wide strategic pricing efforts. Overall, these initiatives are expected to promote further margin expansion in 2026 and beyond.
Developing and Elevating Our Talent
Curtiss-Wright's talent across our base of 9,100 employees is the backbone of our business. We are dedicated in our focus towards employee acquisition, retention, training, and development to grow and enhance our team. We constantly evaluate and refine our talent programs to align with best practices and focus resources on the greatest needs across the company. We continue to enhance our KPI dashboards, and promote key check-in processes between management and employees, providing valuable feedback loops for development and ensuring alignment between employee objectives and in our key growth initiatives. It is imperative that we have the right people in place to lead Curtiss-Wright into the future.
Curtiss-Wright's expanded manufacturing capabilities include a vertical turning lathe to assist in one-of-a-kind, deep pocket boring customized specifically to meet increased U.S. Navy shipbuilding demand as well as expectations for future growth in Commercial Nuclear.
Top: Our vibration-tolerant tilt sensor, used in industrial vehicle and material handling applications, boosts machine performance and runtime using automation, and plays a major role in improving operator safety.
Bottom: Curtiss-Wright's state-of-the-art Christchurch, UK facility has extensive design and manufacturing capabilities, and is committed to quality and excellence in manufacturing for various air data computers, flight recorders, sensors, and industrial applications.
Broadening Our Strategic Footprint
Curtiss-Wright continues to benefit from strong demand in its order book, and in anticipation of continued growth in our end markets, we have invested in facility and footprint expansion globally to better serve our customers. This past year, we increased the U.S. manufacturing capacity and throughput within our Defense Electronics business to support our rugged, high-performance tactical communications equipment. In addition to supporting traditional network communications, Curtiss-Wright's next-generation products are engineered to deliver improved processing performance our customers need to unlock AI capabilities in challenging military environments, enabling faster, more informed decision making at the tactical edge of the battlefield. We also broke ground on a new facility in France to support our global arresting systems business as well as a new valves facility in Canada. Our operations are constantly evolving, and we previously broadened our strategic footprint within our UK operations, creating a shared manufacturing facility to drive synergies and improve efficiency across divisions and numerous product lines.
Curtiss-Wright’s investment in a multi-tasking turn cut machining center, together with innovative manufacturing capabilities, has improved our lead times and efficiency in milling specialized large valve components.
PROMOTING R&D INVESTMENTS
Curtiss-Wright delivers tremendous value to its customers by remaining a trusted supplier while continuing to make thoughtful and targeted investments in critical technologies across the markets we serve. We support investments in both internal and customer-funded development programs, and have maintained a disciplined yet accelerated pace of incremental investments that align with leading industry growth drivers across all of our end markets. As an organization, we continuously focus on investments in R&D to maintain our technological leadership and stay ahead of our customers’ needs. Over the past five years, Curtiss-Wright has grown its total investments in R&D at a faster pace than sales, which will drive future growth for our Company.
For example, in Defense, we are aligned with strategic military priorities and ensure that we are fully equipped to support our customers throughout the entire program lifecycle, across our aerospace, ground and naval defense markets, while also helping to speed the delivery of next-generation technology, such as faster data communications capabilities for sensor and mission processing applications, to the battlefield.
We design and build ruggedized computing solutions with NVIDIA GPUs, such as the high-end Blackwell architecture, while our Fabric100™ family of products provides industry-leading 100 Gigabit connectivity, enabling the highest performance in deployable computing systems today.
Within Naval Defense, we continue to receive significant development funding on the next-generation SSN(X) submarine. Our position as a mission-critical partner to the U.S. Navy has led to increased maritime industrial base funding for investments in capital equipment and capacity expansion to support our near- and long-term growth. In Commercial Aerospace, we continue to invest in sensor technology in the hottest sections of engines, electro-mechanical (EM) actuation equipment, and specialized coatings, all of which are yielding new opportunities for growth. In Industrial, our investments and service levels have yielded new wins in power electronics that continue to support our industry-leading positions. Lastly, in Commercial Nuclear, we continue to accelerate the pace of our investments, enhance our relationships, and expand our content across the leading 300-megawatt-plus SMR developers to support future growth.
Overall, and as we continue to drive these increased investments across the organization, we remain focused on delivering strong growth in earnings and free cash flow to support continued investment in the Company and generate strong returns for our shareholders.
A Curtiss-Wright employee seen working here on a high precision rotational sensor used in numerous demanding manufacturing applications.