Touchstone Advanced Composites Partnering with Northrop Grumman on YFQ-48A Talon Blue CCA
Touchstone Advanced Composites is supporting Northrop Grumman in developing its new YFQ-48A Talon Blue Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).
As part of the project, Touchstone is helping with complex structural tooling for the aircraft, which includes:
- Providing CFOAM tooling material
- Fabricating aircraft parts
Touchstone’s CFOAM technology is made from domestically sourced bituminous coal, offering thermally stable tools with high precision that users can modify along with changing aircraft designs. Additionally, CFOAM can be used when transitioning from development to the first stages of production.
As Touchstone has capabilities for specialized production, the company is prepared to build the Talon Blue with modern considerations like scalability and adaptability.
The collaboration was also a crucial part of Talon Blue’s autonomous taxi test that took place in Mojave, California.
Northrop Grumman’s goals for Talon Blue are to offer a next-gen autonomous aircraft that is:
- Cost-effective
- Modular
- Rapidly deployable
“Our focus is on bridging the gap between prototype and full-rate production without compromising performance,” said Dan Connell, president of Core’s Innovations business unit.
Connell continued, “By providing a versatile material with tight control over thermal properties and material behavior, we’re able to support a faster, more adaptable engineering process as aircraft continue to evolve.”
He added, “CFOAM is a great example of how Core Natural Resources is creating new value propositions for coal, positioning it as a key material in next-generation applications across advanced manufacturing sectors such as aerospace and defense.”
Touchstone Advanced Composites is part of the Innovations business unit of Core Natural Resources.