By Geoff Fein
ATK [ATK] is expecting its composite technology business to continue to grow for both the commercial airline industry and military systems and the company is making significant investments to ensure it can meet the demand, according to an ATK official.
“The big picture is that we are one of–if not the–world leaders in this business,” Jack Cronin, president, ATK mission systems, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“First, we are the technology leader in composite fiber and composite fiber technology,” he said.
Many of the parts are built using automated technology, for example things like fiber placement as well as other key tools, Cronin said. “Most of the parts on the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) are built on what are called fiber placement machines.”
ATK patented that fiber placement machine technology many years ago, he added.
“We have been in the fiber placement world for many years. We have really worked very hard in the last several years to substantially expand what we are doing,” Cronin said. “Thus, we put a very focused business on aero structures and composites.”
The company’s business is founded on a value proposition that only has a couple of very simple things to it, he said.
“The first thing is, we are the leader in this technology and thus we drive very hard to maintain a technology leadership in the whole world of composites, and have that reputation and intend to keep it,” Cronin said. “The second aspect of it, our value proposition is really all about building high quality exacting standard parts in a way that we apply our technology…our innovation, in actually how we build machines and set up our factories to provide that quality at lower or reduced cost than what our competitors can do it for.”
ATK also designs and builds the automated machines that make the composite parts, he added.
“We can lay more fiber per hour than any company in the world. We think we can do it with better quality and we are continually developing new automated technologies and machines that allow us to have even more capability,” he said.
For example, over the last three years ATK has doubled its fiber placement speed and the company plans to double it again in the next five years, Cronin said. “We invented automated stiffener forming. Our stiffener forming machine provides production rates nearly 10 times that of the traditional process.”
ATK has also found ways to inspect its systems in a non-destructive way, he added.
“We can inspect right on the fiber placement head and it’s 30 times faster than conventional ultrasonics, which is really important from two things,” Cronin said.
The process enables incredibly rapid delivery because if there is an issue, workers see it, Cronin said. “We can shut down, we can fix it and move forward very, very quickly. It gives us a tremendous flexibility in where we are.”
That effort combined with ATK’s ability to build at high quality and cost, what Cronin calls ‘affordable innovation,’ adds the notion of innovation from a technology standpoint, as well as affordability through the use of automation, machine and factory technology, he added.
Traditionally, ATK continue to be the leader in large launch products. A lot of this composite technology was initiated for space applications, Cronin said.
‘But that business is not a growth area,” he said.
Where Cronin sees growth is in composite aircraft parts. In particular, the company is currently on contract as a major supplier to Airbus on the A350 where ATK is doing all the stiffners and frame for that plane.
“We are working with Rolls-Royce where we are one of their critical suppliers in terms of the composite parts of the next generation of A350 engines. We are working at GE (General Electric) on their 747 engine where we are building fan containment cases there,” Cronin said. “We’ve achieved with these contracts very good performance and very high rates of production. We are very pleased in terms of what our capabilities are there.”
In composite systems for commercial aircraft, Cronin said ATK has several billions of dollars in backlog and the company intends to have several billion more dollars next year. “This is an area of high backlog growth…sustainment.”
Because of that backlog, ATK recently commissioned a substantial upgrade, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, to develop a world-class expansion to its composites manufacturing facility in Iuka, Miss., he added.
The other key part of the composite business is on the military side, Cronin said.
Those efforts are run out of Dayton, Ohio, where ATK has a facility that works very close with the Air Force on advanced type programs, he said.
And the company’s work on Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] F-35 JSF is headquarters in Clearfield, Utah.
“JSF for us has been just a tremendous story. Our relationship with LMT could not be better. It’s a tremendously well partnered team,” Cronin said. “We have a high degree of interchange with them. We have gone from a position of being basically a supplier of a few parts to a major supplier on JSF and a critical technology adviser to Lockheed Martin in this area.”
ATK has a long-term agreement for minimum of 30 percent fiber placed content, Cronin noted. “But we will do much more of that on the part we are doing.
“The kind of things we do now with the upper and lower wing skin, the nacelles, upper access covers in addition, in the ceramics composite area, another area where we are truly experts,” he said. “We are working in very, very hot areas. Our engine components for both the STOVL and CTOL, using a ceramic matrix composite, which is really an intersection between traditional composites and matrix or polymer structures that are more similar to carbon fiber.”
ATK is looking at a wide range of markets. Cronin said the company is probably the earliest innovator in the shipbuilding aspect of composites. For example, the original foray into composite technology is the composite mast that is built on LPD-17 class. “If you look at that large mast structure that goes on LPD-17, ATK builds that composite structure for that ship.”
Additionally, on DDG-1000, ATK is currently building the volume search radar radome, which is a very, very large composite structure and working with several companies and supplying several of the communications and other radome structures that go on that ship, Cronin added.
“We are, however, not pursuing the actual integrated mast structure on DDG-(1000). We are in discussions with some people on those kind of things, but a lot really depends on where the shipbuilding roadmap goes in terms of how we make those decisions,” he said.