Defence & Obsolescence
Designers have to address issues such as size, weight and power (SWaP) and while defence budgets are under pressure innovation and research and development are still taking place. Among areas receiving significant investment are, according to Steve Munns, the European mil-aero marketing manager at Linear Technology, “the security sector where intelligence, surveillance, jamming and countermeasures capabilities have come into sharp focus in recent years. Another area is autonomous systems in the form of unmanned vehicles, robotics and smart weapons. “ Future soldier systems such as the Land
Warrior or Predator drones or the growing use of medical robots on the battle field are all being developed, but even the ‘humble’ connector is undergoing significant change.
Connector technologies are evolving rapidly focusing on size and density to meet the demands for space-saving interconnections in a host of different systems.
"Cost and weight reductions are certainly the hot buttons at the moment, and our applications teams are often able to make a big difference to the weight of the wiring harness and interconnect. The key is often using new materials, like our composite tubing, used to protect wiring harnesses from heat and impact. This has been designed into a number of European defence applications as it offers better corrosion performance than aluminium, lower weight than stainless steel and lower cost than titanium," explains Mark Owen, product marketing manager, TT electronics.
Smaller, higher density interconnects are having to meet extremely high requirements for vibration, shock and temperature tolerance. New materials are being employed with the growing use of composite thermoplastics in high-reliability systems. Electromagnetic interference remains the number one problem for designers of cables and connectors systems. Interconnect technology innovations in this area include the use of improved shielding materials, advanced EMI filter connectors and the use of new conductive surface finished technologies and as high-speed data systems become more prevalent in the defence space so connector technology that can deliver the levels of performance
© Bae Systems
required in harsh setting becomes increasingly important, especially in the networked battlefield where soldiers and military vehicle electronics have to be able to use and handle complex data and analysis systems.
Minimising weight and fitting
increasingly powerful hardware into confined spaces are perennial problems for military design teams. For example in the development of UAVs the pressure on engineers is to come up with a design that wastes as little power as possible and to make power conversion and distribution as efficient as possible. For man-portable systems this is a crucial requirement as all the power comes from batteries and designers need to combine low weight,
small size and long operating life. For component suppliers in the defence space there are many challenges to contend with, whether that is managing a shorter business cycle or increasing collaboration between companies, managing and sharing the costs of research and development avoiding counterfeit components or operating a transparent and effective supply chain. According to Owen, "The squeeze in defence budgets is creating new opportunities for suppliers with the right skills, the right mindset and a pro-active attitude. We are changing the way that we sell into the defence markets. In a bid to reduce costs some customers have presented us with an outline product specification rather than a finished design and bill of materials. They don’t have the specialist design capabilities in house anymore and look to us to offer support in this area to complete the project. Our application teams include strong design expertise, and can work alongside the customers own design resources on a project to fulfil the design goals quickly using the best available technologies." The increasing globalisation of the defence market means there are a lot of companies from countries such as Brazil, India and the Middle East who are looking to establish links with potential partners. Many companies remain successful and
profitable despite these challenges and with equipment becoming ever more complex in terms of the electronic content it needs to operate, reduced defence budgets do not necessarily mean that the market is in decline. ■
www.cieonline.co.uk
Components in Electronics
March 2013 17
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