Supplement: Distribution Meeting the challenge of SWaP-C


Distribution must be switched on to supporting customers faced with the challenge of keeping down the size and weight of systems, while managing the power capabilities and controlling the cost of each design, according to Roger Tall, director, Charcroft


Defence engineers need to meet SWAP-C and high reliability A


specialist distributor can directly affect the ability of customer designers to minimise the Size, Weight, and Power consumption


(SWaP) of a design. Adding in the need for the designer to minimise the cost of the design, means that the goal of achieving SWaP targets, is evolving into the need to achieve SWaP-C.


SWaP and SWAP-C can be relevant to many sectors, but for mission-critical or high-end sectors there are additional factors which influence the design and need to be supported by distribution. Sectors such as defence and aerospace, in addition to industrial, energy, rail and specialist automotive, have very different dynamics compared to the high-volume sectors in which systems are expected to operate over a relatively short life span.


In harsh and high-end sectors, systems are manufactured in significantly lower volume


24 September 2025


but must be designed to operate with failure- free reliability over a lifetime which can extend to 20-years or more. In these sectors SWaP-C is a critical part of the design cycle. Designers in the defence sector cut design cost by using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) versions of the components at the breadboard (BB) or engineering stage to qualify the circuit design. It is only when the design is qualified that higher-grade versions of the same components are used for the Flight Model (FM) circuit.


Designers are also pushing to use components which are qualified for automotive, rather than being fully screened or defence-qualified in the end application. This is happening in the aerospace platform, in addition to weapons systems and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites.


From a cost perspective this makes sense, because automotive-grade components do not have the higher cost of fully qualified


Components in Electronics


versions of the same component. But there is a potential down-side, because the continued and long-term availability of automotive components can be questioned. The automotive-qualified components may be available now as they are used in high-volume automotive electronics. The risk is that, as technology changes and automotive platforms evolve, there is no guarantee that these components will continue to be available throughout the 20+ year lifetimes in the defence and aerospace sector.


The shape of distribution The way in which most distribution is resourced matches the predominately high-volume focus of most component manufacturers. For designers building mission-critical systems, it is important that the distributor has a deep and long- term understanding of the components as well as the sector and the standards and


qualifications which are required for each system and application.


When a designer uses an automotive- or industrial-grade capacitor at the early stage of the design, the distributor should be looking ahead and checking whether that same capacitor is available as a fully qualified version for the flight model stage of the design.


The numbers speak for themselves. Within the industrial-qualified range of capacitors from a particular manufacturer, just 30 per cent of the same capacitor values are also available as fully qualified to the relevant MIL-STD. This means that the designer is at risk of being forced to re-specify the capacitor if the same value is not available in all grades of reliability.


To ensure that capacitors and other components are shipped with the appropriate documentation, the sales system features a flag which highlights the release that is required for the components in each shipment.


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