IBC Advanced Alloys Corp. a leading beryllium and copper alloys company, announced today that it has been awarded a production contract from Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems to produce a beryllium-aluminum cast component for use in Raytheon’s Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) system, currently in use on U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets.
Terms of the contract were not able to be disclosed, although IBC expects to produce this part for Raytheon over multiple years. The part is a precision cast pitch gimbal housing for the ATFLIR system and is produced from IBC’s proprietary Beralcast® beryllium-aluminum material.
Beralcast® is more than three times stiffer than aluminum with 22% less weight, and can be precision-cast to simple and complex configurations. The material is very lightweight with a high modulus of elasticity and can be precision cast for three-dimensional stability. Beralcast® is ideally suited for aerospace applications, certain demanding semiconductor manufacturing equipment, computer components, and other commercial uses, and allows for a near-net shape to be cast for maximum manufacturing efficiencies.
Raytheon’s Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared pod is a multi-sensor, electro-optical targeting pod incorporating thermographic camera, low-light television camera, target laser rangefinder/laser designator, and laser spot tracker that has been flight tested on all F/A-18 models. It delivers pinpoint accuracy and reliability for air-to-air and air-to-ground mission support, and assures mission success by integrating advanced EO and IR sensors with one of the most powerful lasers on the market. ATFLIR can locate and designate targets day or night at ranges exceeding 40 nautical miles and altitudes surpassing 50,000 feet, outperforming comparable targeting systems. As a powerful net-enabler, it can pass tracking and targeting information to other nodes in the networked battlespace with the speed and precision.
