IBC Awarded Another Tooling Contract by Lockheed

Investment caster IBC Engineered Materials has a new Lockheed Martin contract to design, manufacture, and implement hard tooling for the final qualification of Beralcast^® castings as a beryllium-aluminum alternative for precision targeting components for the Sniper ATP. IBC, an operating division of IBC Advanced Alloys Corp., already supplies beryllium-aluminum castings to Lockheed for the electro-optical targeting system (EOTS) of the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jet.

The value and other terms of the contract were not announced.

The Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod is a long-range, target detection/identification and continuous surveillance system for fixed-wing aircraft, for all missions, including close air-support of ground forces. It provides pilots with high-resolution images for precision targeting and non-traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

IBC noted that Beralcast alloys can be cast into high-performance, complex parts that require lightweight and high-stiffness qualities, and can substitute for aluminum, magnesium, titanium, metal matrix composites, as well as pure beryllium or powder-met beryllium-aluminum. The principal Beralcast alloys are more than three times stiffer than aluminum, 22% lighter, and can be precision-cast for simple and complex three-dimensional stability.

Chris Huskamp, president of Wilmington, MA-based IBC Engineered Materials, 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."