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The importance of secure supply chains for aerospace & defence
Adam Potter, senior key account & project manager at accredited specialist independent distributor Princeps, explains why secure, trusted and traceable supply chains are vital in aerospace & defence – especially for hi-rel and mission-critical applications
M
ost design engineers rely on electronic component distributors to provide an easy, accessible and reliable channel to help them source
the parts they need for their projects. While requirements – including breadth and depth of range, cost and access to technical support – may vary between industries, supply chains for military and aerospace projects often have unique challenges. Large-scale defence programmes – including bespoke state-of-the-art aircraft, ships or land vehicles (plus supporting systems and equipment) – traditionally require decades to develop, billions to procure and entire sub-economies to manufacture and maintain. Compared to commercial sector applications such as computing, automotive or consumer electronics, supply chains throughout the defence ecosystem face some specific challenges. Critically, defence contracts typically demand long-term commitments spanning decades, with platforms requiring ongoing maintenance and upgrades. The electronic components crucial for advanced defence systems must be readily available throughout these extended service lifecycles – and so were often designed and sourced via bespoke development programmes in the past. This contrasts starkly with the commercial sector, where innovation, demand and design drives shorter product cycles, encouraging regular component replacements and upgrades, using standard parts. But as technology has advanced at pace, and usage of sophisticated semiconductor- based electronics, computing and digital capabilities has increased, defence procurement has increasingly come to rely on COTS technologies, components and suppliers – potentially leaving Western nations vulnerable, as adversaries employ new generations of vastly less expensive, more accessible digital capabilities.
26 March 2024
Advanced defence technologies “Defense is being disrupted by new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous systems, robotics, ubiquitous sensors and low-cost access to space,” warned former national security advisor Christian Brose in testimony to the US House Armed Services Committee. “Low-cost robotic vehicles, AI-enabled loitering munitions, digital targeting systems, cyber weapons, persistent communications and surveillance satellites, and other advanced capabilities… are transforming the modern battlefield.” Early adoption and heavy R&D investment in semiconductors from the defence sector helped fund, establish and grow the chip industry. It also helped pioneer the widespread use of semiconductors in everyday life seen today, where chips are the essential component (the brains, if you will) of the electronics powering all manner of everyday devices, products and systems, enabling advances in computing, networking and communications, power, lighting, sensing,
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healthcare, transportation – and countless other applications.
The balance of (purchasing) power But as adoption in other industries and applications has risen rapidly, the balance of power has shifted. As demand ramped up, the rate of innovation among chip producers accelerated (illustrated by Moore’s Law), while sales volumes helped drive down costs. Defence firms benefited from both these developments, and over time, defence-specific development programmes for components and systems were commonly replaced by reliance on COTS technologies – resulting in cost- savings, shorter lead times and more rapid access to technology improvements. As broad industry adoption exploded (especially in computing, first with personal computing, then mobile devices, as well as networking and communications – but also throughout automotive), the purchasing power of defence and aerospace firms (who needed relatively far smaller volumes) has declined. Development cycles for consumer
products are typically much faster, based on the assumption that they will be replaced by faster, smaller, cheaper technology every few years, driving chip suppliers to reduce support for – and even abandon – older, lower- demand legacy products more rapidly. But most defence projects run
counterintuitively to this approach, with the requirement for far longer usable product lifecycles (driven by massive engineering efforts to create expensive hardware – and the subsequent need to support it in the field) meaning they typically seek to prolong the lifespan and availability of components, resulting in hard-to-manage supply chain challenges. As technology evolves at faster rates than defence and aerospace manufacturers need or can accommodate in their product lifecycles, the legacy chips and components they rely on become more expensive to both produce and source – leading to the problem known as DMSMS (diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages) and/or resulting in obsolescence.
www.cieonline.co.uk
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