\u2018Like building Legos\u2019<\/p>\n
Albacore intends to initially build 75 vehicles per year at its South Philadelphia facility and would like to eventually produce several thousand units. The founders identified coastal defense \u2014 of an island like Taiwan, for example \u2014 as a prime use case for the devices.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we think about theater-level deterrence, especially in the Indo-Pacific, these each can do severe damage to gray-hulled vessels,\u201d Huddleston said, referring to military ships. \u201cIf you have enough of these in a waterway, it makes it very difficult to do any island invasions. We started this because we wanted to prevent the next war from even starting, and we believe that that peaceful deterrence through strength is really the way to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The vehicles can also be used for commercial surveys of oil and gas areas and of minerals on the sea floor, and to collect data for oceanic research, he said.<\/p>\n
The company has 25 people on staff and employs additional contractors and technicians, and plans to at least triple its headcount over the next year, the founders said. The workers include recent high school and college graduates, as well as more experienced staff who came from other aerospace manufacturers, said Andrew Wong, Albacore\u2019s associate director of federal affairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to give young people a chance to build something great for the country,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a job that anyone can do, really. It\u2019s almost like building Legos \u2014 very complicated Legos, albeit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Albacore\u2019s website lists a dozen job openings, including for mechanical, electrical and software engineers.<\/p>\n
Loeffler noted that the U.S. defense industrial base consists of 70% small businesses like Albacore. She said changes in tax regulations championed by the Trump administration were making it easier for them to succeed, including immediate expensing for research and development, 100% expensing for capital investment and a deduction for overtime pay.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the biggest pain points of small businesses today is they want to hire more workers,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have half a million jobs open in manufacturing today, and that\u2019s why this administration is focusing on rebuilding the industrial base \u2014 because it provides not just national security, but economic opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Like building Legos\u2019 Albacore intends to initially build 75 vehicles per year at its South Philadelphia facility and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[90358,69,71,70,25199],"class_list":["post-272196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-department-of-defense","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-small-business-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}