Engineered Support stock soars with new contracts.(Engineered Support Systems)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)

With most of the stock market crashing and burning around it, local defense supplier Engineered Support Systems has seen its share price double during the past nine months.

Fueled by a steady stream of new contracts, its NASDAQ-traded stock has soared from about $12 a share in March to a close of $26.13 Jan. 10. Over the same nine months, investors slashed the value of the average NASDAQ stock by more than half sending the tech-heavy composite index from a March peak of more than 5,000 to 2,524.18 as of Jan. 10.

Having renounced the uncertain future of dot-com profits, investors are flocking to companies such as Engineered Support, with its documented backlog of orders for $884 million in military gear, ranging from field hospitals that inflate out of the back of a truck in 20 minutes to air filters and electrical generators hardened against chemical or biological attacks. …