en.Wedoany.com Reported - Touchstone Advanced Composites, the innovation business unit of Core Natural Resources (NYSE: CNR), is manufacturing complex structural tooling for Northrop Grumman's next-generation YFQ-48A "Talon Blue" autonomous collaborative combat aircraft. Touchstone utilizes its innovative CFOAM® technology to produce mold materials made from domestically sourced U.S. bituminous coal.

Core Natural Resources (formerly Contura Energy) is a leading U.S. metallurgical and thermal coal mining company headquartered in Bristol, Tennessee. Touchstone Advanced Composites, an aerospace composite manufacturer under Core's innovation business unit, specializes in providing comprehensive services for high-performance materials, tooling, parts, and components for the aerospace and defense sectors.

CFOAM® is Touchstone's proprietary carbon foam material technology, which processes bituminous coal through carbonization and graphitization to produce mold materials with high precision and strong thermal stability. These molds can be rapidly modified according to aircraft designs and easily transition from the research and development phase to initial production. Northrop Grumman is developing the modular, cost-effective, and rapidly deployable autonomous wingman "Talon Blue" using state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies. Touchstone provides CFOAM® mold materials and manufactures certain components for this aircraft, playing a key role in the successful autonomous taxi tests of "Talon Blue" conducted in Mojave, California.

Dan Connell, President of Core's Innovation Business Unit, stated that Touchstone's focus is on bridging the gap between prototyping and mass production, supporting faster and more flexible engineering processes by providing multifunctional materials with strict control over thermal performance and material behavior. Core's aerospace operations currently occupy 75,000 square feet of production space in West Virginia and Texas. Additionally, its joint venture in China, C-BATT, is expected to reduce U.S. dependence on imported graphite, while the innovation team continues to explore the development potential of rare earth elements and critical minerals on the company's mining platforms.

This collaboration demonstrates the innovative application of U.S. coal resources in advanced aerospace manufacturing, providing a model for the transformation of the traditional coal industry toward high-value-added materials.

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