API taps component replacement market.

API Electronics (Hauppauge, NY), a provider of custom replacement parts, is finding a lucrative future in the past by providing the U.S. military with products almost impossible to find--obsolete electronic components for everything from M1 tanks to Patriot missiles. Military hardware, like the B-52 bomber, can have a long and useful lifespan, but crucial semiconductors, transistors, diodes, capacitors and circuits can wear out.

"A strong military needs to be combat ready. There can be no excuse for a tank or missile that doesn't perform properly in a life and death situation. That's where we come in," says Phil DeZwirek, chief executive officer and chairman of API Electronics. "The Department of Defense and numerous military contractors depend on us to manufacture crucial replacement parts that they can't get anywhere else."

API has acquired the original prints and tooling for out-of-production components from the original manufacturers. As a result, the company can build the exact same part "even better," according to Tom Mills, president of API Electronics, thanks to improved production methods and technologies currently in use at the company's 15,000-sq. ft. manufacturing facility.