War is hale: so is the business it spawns. Except for bases, N.C. doesn't get its due.

• Author: Galuszka, Peter

Like the ancient granite cliffs of Crowders Mountain, which lies between its plants in Shelby and Gastonia, Curtiss-Wright Controls is linked to the past. Its name is an amalgam of those of the brothers who pioneered powered flight and their main rival in commercializing it. One of the first markets Wilbur and Orville Wright and Glenn Curtiss targeted was the military.

In 1929, Wright Aeronautical Co. and Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Co. merged into Curtiss-Wright Corp., whose motion-control subsidiary bought a Shelby gear maker in 1985. It kept the 64 employees. "We started by moving commercial-aviation work here and trained the people to aerospace standards," says President George Yohrling, whose Gastonia-based division contributed nearly half of the company's $513.3 million revenue in 2002. In 2003, it landed more than $80 million in contracts to make parts for the new F-22 Raptor fighter jet, for a pilotless warplane being developed by Boeing and for other military aircraft.

"We've grown to the point we've shut down the facility in New Jersey, and the corporate office has moved down here," Yohrling adds. "We also moved all the military and defense work to the Shelby plant, and repair and overhaul has moved to Gastonia." At both places, Curtiss-Wright Controls' 315 Tar Heel workers are engaged in precision manufacturing. Measurements are in microns, and tolerance for error is zero. These are the kinds of jobs and business that economic developers dream about.

But despite the massive military presence in the state--which ranks fourth in number of troops based here--this is a war North Carolina is losing. The $1.5 billion the Defense Department awarded to civilian defense contractors for work in the state during fiscal 2002 pales against the $23.8 billion that went to California. Or the $18.1 billion that wound up next door in Virginia, the No. 2 defense-contracting state. North Carolina ranked 27th, winning less than 1% of the $170.6 billion awarded nationwide.

"I know it's not a pretty situation," says Troy Pate of Goldsboro, co-chairman of the North Carolina Advisory Commission on Military Affairs, created by the General Assembly in 1985 to protect and expand the state's defense sector. He concedes that his group has done little even to catalog the defense industry's presence here.

Businesses doing defense work in the state range from large corporations such as Progress Energy to small cut-and-sew operations. Kearfott Guidance and Navigation, based in Wayne, N.J., has a plant in Black Mountain that makes circuit boards for missiles, torpedoes, M1A1 Abrams tanks and Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk, the unmanned reconnaissance plane used to find Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Mount Gilead-based McRae Industries just won a $30 million contract to make boots for the Army, the Air Force and the Marine Corps.

Goodrich moved its headquarters from Akron, Ohio, to Charlotte in 1999. Once known for tires, it now manufactures aerospace equipment, including jet-fighter ejection seats and components for the V-22 Osprey, a cross between an airplane and a helicopter. But Goodrich doesn't build the equipment in North Carolina, where about 200 executives and staff direct global operations from a suburban office park. It does plan to open a 150-employee customer-service center in Monroe this year.

General Dynamics is moving its Armament and Technical Products Division from Vermont to Charlotte, bringing 400 jobs and a $30 million investment. Even that news was bittersweet. The company passed over Onslow County, home of Camp Lejeune, as the site to build a new generation of amphibious assault vehicles for the Marines. The factory and its 340 jobs will go to Prince William County, near Quantico Marine Base just south of Washington, D.C. In Virginia.

All hours of night and day, they come trooping into Custom Skin Fantasies, a garishly painted tattoo parlor near Fort Bragg. Many of them have just returned from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they guarded Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners. Sample designs of gargoyles and women with giant breasts festoon the shop's walls. "They seem to like tribal art the best," manager Nikolai Astrov says. Just down Bragg Boulevard, soldiers borrow against tomorrow at Jery's Pawn and Shooting Supplies, hocking tape decks, boots and, recently, two Russian SKS carbines, complete with bayonets. Or they guzzle beer off duty at the dozens of bars or ogle dancers in one of Fayetteville's 20 or so strip clubs.

This is the economy many envision when the military's impact on North Carolina is mentioned. But...