IBC Advanced Alloys has been awarded an investment casting hard tooling contract from Lockheed Martin for its Sniper Advanced targeting Pod components.
Under the terms of the contract, IBC, through its Engineered Materials division, will be responsible for the design, manufacture and implementation of the hard tooling to be used as a part of the final qualification process to establish and qualify Beralcast castings as an effective beryllium-aluminum alternative for precision targeting components for Sniper ATP.
Chris Huskamp, president of IBC’s Engineered Materials division said, “Sniper ATP is an interoperable system across multiple aircraft platforms and sets the benchmark for next-generation electro-optical targeting systems. Our family of castable beryllium aluminum alloys, or Beralcast®, is ideal for applications such as Sniper ATP where weight, modulus and temperature stability (CTE) are critical performance factors. We are delighted,” continued Huskamp, “to be expanding our relationship with Lockheed Martin and are proud to be part of the Sniper program.”
Sniper ATP provides pilots with high-resolution imagery for precision targeting and non-traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Sniper ATP is the most widely deployed targeting system for fixed-wing aircraft in use by the U.S. Air Force and is the targeting system of choice for 20 international air forces.
In addition to fulfilling precision strike mission requirements, Sniper ATP is changing the way armed forces operate in theater with new capabilities to meet the challenges of non-traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Beralcast alloys can be used in virtually any high performance application requiring complex, lightweight and high-stiffness parts and can be substituted for aluminum, magnesium, titanium, metal matrix composites as well as pure beryllium or powder metallurgy beryllium-aluminum. Beralcast’s principal alloys are more than three times stiffer than aluminum with 22 percent less weight and can be precision-cast for simple and complex three-dimensional stability. These high-modulus alloys are ideal for high performance industrial and high tech components as well as for a wide range of aerospace applications.