Electronic Products military/aerospace electronics forum

Electronic Products military/aerospace electronics forum

The 1^st annual Electronic Products military electronics teleconference

With the renewed emphasis on military modernization, missile defense, and the exploration of space, military and aerospace electronics are being viewed increasingly by manufacturers as a potential market niche. We gathered experts from several companies involved in the military/aerospace electronics industry, sat them down, and asked them a few questions.

Getting a handle on COTS
Steve Butler, VPT : When I think of COTS, I think of a couple of things. I think of�well, buying off the shelves. So we sell products off the shelves. But I know there are military users out there now that are buying commercial-level products.

But we design our products specifically for the military applications, and we maintain a certain level of quality, which keeps cost down, but also enables our military customers to meet the reliability requirements, pass the qualification testing, and put products in space.

Mark Cifelli, Cableco Technologies : Well, we look at COTS maybe just a little bit differently. Everything we make is per order. So the cable assemblies that we would do, we consider COTS, which would mean that any assembly house out there that manufactures a cable assembly would be able to do this type of an assembly. So therefore, we would call it a commercially available assembly for the military.

And also the military comes to us and asks where the fine line is. They come to us and say, well, here's a cable, but we want this cable to perform at some level of electrical performance�the inductance being say one nanohenry per foot connectorized. That doesn't exist anywhere in the world. But the military came to us and asked us to develop it, so that was something that was very highly specialized and it took a long time to develop it with them. So something like that, even though it's cable, we would not consider to be COTS.

Tom Chang, Data Device Corp. : My point of view is that COTS is a great place for people to start. The products that I'm very intimately involved with are primarily networking, and I think what we're seeing is that people are taking and leveraging a lot of the commercial standards and particularly the software they're leveraging off of to reuse that.

But they take that and then choose parts of it that fit their applications and then they'll�for their specific requirements�make changes on top of that. So for things like physical characteristics they may spec a wider temperature range. They may start using connectors that aren't commercial standards just because they say some factors that the commercial people don't. So I think it's very important in slashing time to market for the military nowadays, but for using COTS in massive quantities�we're not seeing that.

Electronic Products: So basically COTS is almost like a base unit that the military builds upon or asks you to build upon to create the custom device.

Tom C.: Exactly.

Brian Rogers, Hi-Rel Products Group, International Rectifier : You know, IR offers several different levels of COTS. We have true commercial products that are typically power semiconductors, which are in fact packages and used in all kinds of applications�commercial, consumer, industrial, automotive. And they're standard off-the-shelf commercial products.

Then we have what we'd call Hi-Rel COTS. And we're building standard products, which we would call COTS. They're standard, but they're typically in different packages than the commercial group, but often we're typically putting the product into hermetic packages, which are more suitable for some of the more stringent military aerospace applications.

So when we don't do any high-reliability screening on the devices we would refer to that as a Hi-Rel COTS spot.

EP: So your Hi-Rel COTS are also sold to commercial users, or is it basically then a military product, but manufactured in quantities?

Brian: Well, military or commercial aerospace or space. Typically, it's not going to be used in a true commercial application because the cost of the hermetic product is higher than an equivalent plastic product.

EP: Now is there still a savings to the government for your COTS?

Brian: Well, there's a lot of different situations out there, and the answer is yes in a lot cases because�well, first the part has to function in the applications, and military and aerospace applications are very rugged environments. You can see a lot of different stresses put on the parts that you don't see in a PC or an industrial-type application. So the parts and the subsystem that our customer builds have to be able to survive that environment. So in some cases a standard commercial component or subsystem just isn't going to survive.

In addition, military aerospace customers will often take a standard commercial product and then try to up-screen it, do burn-in or temperature cycling, or some other type of reliability screening on the part. And by the time they send the parts out to a test lab and deal with all of the overhead and administrative costs of doing that, and go through lock failures and all of the work that is involved in responding to those situations, their costs are pretty high and it's a little bit difficult for the users to really understand what their costs are going to be.

EP: So you see some of what Tom Chang sees with the COTS being a jump-off point for more complex or higher screened devices.

Brian: Sure.

Tom C.: From our perspective, I think that the biggest difference is that the military stuff typically operates at different frequencies and our components are kind of designed for specific frequencies. So there are two things that kind of fight against the military in this whole COTS thing. The screening that everybody's talked about is much more stringent and really adds an order of magnitude to the price of the product.

And the other thing is the volume is quite small typically because their products generally don't have any commercial uses because of the frequency.

EP: The question then becomes, at what point does the screening make the device not cost effective? You could have a device that's been screened at such a high level that it would never be under a threat of damage and yet it would be put into a subsystem that may be destroyed in the first moment of combat.

Tom Watson, Agile Materials : I think that's a good point, but, you know, the flip side is, let's say our phase shifters for instance are going into JSF radar or something along those lines. You can't really afford to have those things quitting on you, and they operate in such extremes.

I do kind of see why they really do need to be screened and it's not an accident that all this Mil-spec stuff developed over the years. That all came out after they had stuff fail, I'm quite certain.

Jerry Havenstad, Behlman : At Behlman, most of the requirements that we see are what we call modified COTS. We see requirements in the government for a power supply, and they have their requirements for temperature, humidity, shock, vibration�all of those things. What we try to do is take standard commercial products�not necessarily our own, we might use VPT or Interpoint or Vicor or some other commercially available module�package it for the government so that it meets the shock and vibration levels, cool it properly so that they have a stringent environment, but make sure there's enough air or conduction cooling or whatever's required to work in the system, and put it together. It's a tremendous savings to the government because we're hardly developing any circuitry. It's all proven commercial technology, but it needs a little help in order to work in the military systems.

We also take our own commercial frequency converters�big rack-mounted units�and the government might want those to take shock and vibration and temperature that the standard unit won't.

EP: So COTS is a place to start from that does reduce costs because a lot of that technology is already developed and mature and designed in, but it has to be tweaked or modified. The level of tweak, I gather, is the big question at that point?

Jerry: Right. Depending on the system that the product is used in. If it's going to be mounted to a gun and take a thousand Gs of shock, it takes a lot more tweaking than something that might be sitting in a sheltered lab someplace.

The government actually has a spec for power suppliers where they talk about COTS modified and custom design, and they feel modified COTS is the way to go. It's the lowest cost for dollar for a unit because you have all the advantages of commercially available things that are out in the field and have all of the bugs worked out. And yet it's customized to make sure it works in the particular system.

Simon Abel, Interpoint, Crane Aerospace and Electronics : I think COTS means different things to different designers, and it depends what you're designing for and what sort of environmental requirements you have. And we do a little bit of just about everything that everyone's said so far. We do have some of our military products, which have less screening and are lower in cost, which we call COTS devices. We do use some commercially available industrial-type products and mount them on boards for COTS devices.

In general, I think probably the toughest environment is military satellites, and I believe that our space products�they're very high level of products with a lot of screening�are considered to be COTS products because they are commercially available off-the-shelf devices and for a space user that's kind of unusual. The military is used to everything being custom designed and having extraordinarily high specs, and we can provide that type of thing as others can off the shelf.

Gary Tuftly Aeroflex Test Solutions : Here at Aeroflex Test Solutions I think we see COTS in three different ways. First, we offer products that we actually invested in�by putting the products in place, putting them in our catalog, and making them available to the marketplace. And that's, as far as we're concerned, true COTS.

The second kind of COTS is where the customer comes to us and says, “I've got this problem, but I don't have the development funds to put the product in place.” And because of the market opportunity we choose to go ahead and underwrite the cost of development. The advantages in this area when you do that with your product is you normally don't have any competition because they didn't see it coming.

Second, it is designed specifically for the user. The problem with it is the user normally wants you to push technology. So you literally are out on the leading edge of some issue.

The third kind of COTS is when we have customers who actually pay to have their designs done primarily in the military. But then they ask us to de-feature or downgrade that product's performance to allow it to be exported to certain countries and not have that country have the same capabilities as the U.S.

Which is particularly problematic sometimes working with your customer when he knows he's getting something less than his U.S. brother. But that's the only way the State Department will allow you to export some of these things.

EP: Your second description of COTS is actually closer to an internal research project because you're still talking about a single user. Do you in turn take that device once you've developed it and sell it to others or is it only for them?

Gary: Well, I'll use just one example, one that's sort of noteworthy at the moment. The U.S. Air Force through lessons learned has found that not all downed crewmen have been easy to find. So they're asking us to do a test solution that will ensure that the assets issued to flight crews are actually working so they can actually rescue them. But they didn't plan any development funds in the federal budget. So we underwrote the cost of putting the test solution in place knowing full well that not only the U.S., but the NATO allies that also might be rescuing downed crewmen can both have a benefit of this particular solution. But in this particular case, the customer did not pay for the design.

David Zuwacki, Evans Capacitor : I'll say our definition of COTS is a little different. Evans Capacitor is a relatively new company with a new product and COTS has been sort of a mixed blessing. The military wants to buy COTS, but still wants military specifications on it. The problem with our industry is when there's a Mil drawing on something it's very specific and they say Mil specification 31413 or whatever. And since capacitors are such an old technology, the requirements are usually very specific, with not much leeway either left or right, but this COTS has allowed us to come in.

And what we wind up doing is similar to what Jerry does. You take a COTS thing and test it to a Mil spec, but you can't call it a Mil spec and then send it to the customer. Our difficulty right now is getting them to understand that COTS could be just as good.

EP: Does anyone else have any additional comments about COTS?

Gary: I find it particularly interesting both as a design obstacle and as an impact on the designer. The purchasing manager always wants you to use parts that you used before because that gives him or her buying leverage. On the other hand, the engineer always likes the new technology. The customer always wants you to supply it forever because these military systems don't have the short commercial life expectancy that the PC on your desk does.

So one of the things that always scares me about custom off the shelf is the supplier doesn't have to offer it tomorrow even though he offered it this afternoon.

Communication gap?
EP: When you're talking about some projects, you could have multiple vendors with multiple engineers working on different aspects of a project. How is the communication among all the participants?

David: Communication is one of the most difficult problems we have. Sometimes we don't know what's holding up a project. They don't tell us many times what it's being used for, when it's going to be developed. We get notification that an order's coming in soon, but it never does.

Don't get us wrong, we're doing very well as a business. But sometimes it's frustrating to deal with military contractors like a Northrop-Grumman with 30 divisions, and it seems like one person in the building doesn't speak to the other person. It's such a maze to try to get these products in the door.

EP: What do you think would be a way to improve communication?

David: That's a tough one. It seems like it should be an individual company thing, but especially with these military contractors�they're buying out smaller and smaller companies under them, but yet have no communication between each other.

Gary: I think communication is a particular problem and always has been within the engineering community. The person doing the buying or the requiring or the marketing wants to talk about it in his lingo�whatever discipline he works in. We work a lot with radio manufacturers, and they want to talk about radio systems and we want to talk about tests. And the two languages are like German and Greek.

When we turn around then and have our engineers talk to our suppliers you have the same disconnect because they're actually talking in two different languages. And then you also have the issue of the software people speaking one language and the hardware and RF designers another. So I see it as the engineer is sitting at the center of the wheel, and he's got spokes going out and he is either more or less proficient on each one of the spokes. And you constantly have to stay on top of making sure that those communications are not failing you in order to get your designs to work.

Simon: Communication can be an issue in particular when you're trying to get information on the program and the time scales that they're trying to work with. Many of our customers have their own internal communication issues, which means that they don't talk to their own people.

We try to get around that with some partnerships. We try to become a preferred supplier. We have a very successful key customer program, which tries to move us further up the food chain to more of a management level so that we can get an insight into what the customer requires in the future or what sort of technologies we need to be working on to provide that solution at some time down the road.

Jerry: Communication is sometimes a very big problem, sometimes not so bad. It's just very important on various programs to stay in touch with all aspects of the program whether it's a subcontractor or marketing or engineering. It's not too difficult when the company is in one spot. And sometimes it's very difficult when�with all of the buying of various divisions�you might have purchasing in Massachusetts, engineering in Arizona, and manufacturing in Texas in some companies, and it becomes a big issue.

Tom W.: One of the hardest things is trying to find the right people to talk to within these humongous corporations and it's not like there's a phone listing where you can find folks. Also, a lot of these companies are running really lean so they've got one person now doing three or four jobs, where 10 years ago that wasn't the case. A lot of them are kind of just keeping their head above water and until something reaches a crisis level they don't really seek out new technologies�they just kind of stick with what they have unless there's some really compelling reasons forcing them to change.

EP: What have you done to try to improve that level of communication?

Tom W.: Well, it's really hard. You've got to get in kind of a little executive sponsorship actually. A top-down sort of driven approach I've found is the best way to get some visibility in a corporation. Pretty hard finding an engineer and going up. You know, they'll look at it and say, “Oh, this is kind of cool” and it just kind of dies there.

EP: So you feel engineers are not advocating the newer technology, or is it that they don't have a voice to advocate?

To W.: I would say more the second, and that they're just so busy. Most of them don't have time to go out and look for new technology.

Brian: I don't know that our business is any different from any other business from a communication standpoint. But what's probably different about our industry is that our customers are typically big-job shops. They're not really doing a lot of standard product lines themselves that are in continuous manufacturing and going through a relatively smooth production cycle. They're basically subject to year-to-year funding of programs and they don't know when it's going to hit and it's tough for them to plan for it. So you're always dealing with last-minute situations where customers all of the sudden need to deliver their product, and they need to get our product to deliver their product and everything is last minute. So it's just kind of the nature of the business, I suppose.

EP: You also said that you manufacture for commercial space as well. Do you have the same communication problems with your civilian space clients?

Brian: Yes. They're very similar to the military people and the aerospace people.

Tom C.: Communication, I think, has been in a very interesting state of flux in the military market. I think this market is trying to move toward more of a commercial mindset where more of the responsibility is put on vendors. So I think we're right in the middle of that and people are still trying to feel their way out of “how much responsibility do I want to move from myself to my vendor.” It's no longer the case where someone hands you a 500-page specification and says, “Build to this.” But exactly where these guys are going to fall out is an open issue. I've seen some requirements lists that come pretty close to that old model, and I've seen others that people are obviously hunting for industry solutions without any clear idea of what they have in mind. So I think that's clouding the issue right there.

EP: Do you feel that in that latter case, better education or maybe more salesmanship�I hate to use that word�on the technology to these individuals would help?

Tom W.: I think it's partly the vendors now have to take more of a lead position in the educational process and become more of a technical advocate rather than someone that you go to and say, “implement this spec.” I've gone back and forth between the commercial and military world, and I see that a lot of people in the military are not quite sure where they fit in the process anymore.

Mark: Well, I did hear a few people mention about the different locations. A lot of the government agencies we're dealing with have multiple locations and obviously communication is always difficult in those circumstances. Some of the things we've found to be helpful is creating a design team on the program that we're working on, and conference calls typically can help provided you get buy-in from all the engineers you're working on.

Now some of the frustrating things that happen is you have design changes along the way. We're just a small part of the entire system, but design changes do affect what we have to do and sometimes you're not even aware of them until much later. And of course funding can be a big issue as well. If you're working on a program and all of a sudden the funding has been lost or changed, but you're still working and going down the road with engineering, but communication between purchasing and engineering within one of the large subs does not take place�all of a sudden you're working for free.

Steve: Yes. Communication, like everyone has said, is almost always a problem, but it's just something we all live with and deal with. The more custom the job the more communication problems we have inevitably. This is why Mil spec components were so great. If a vendor's on the Mil spec, you order the Mil spec part. Nobody asks any questions. But when you start getting into these 500-page requirements documents and negotiations go back and forth constantly, continually until the day you deliver, about whether something will meet this or meet that…

And one thing that seems to be happening is the military contractors want to be like the commercial world. They want to just buy a component from us. And they want to pay the lowest price. A lot of times that works great, there's minimal communication issues. But sometimes there is a potential for problems. For example, if they bought something off the shelf, but then there was really more to what they wanted�there really was a 100-page document they weren't showing us.

Jerry: In terms of International Rectifier's products, I know that the military has done a lot of extensive testing on quite a number of their parts. They're very concerned with the plastic packages, and they've found a tremendous improvement in performance these days. Now they've spent millions of dollars testing the parts, but that information is not readily available to anyone. I'd like to know what they've tested and what they've found is good, and it's very hard to find that out.

EP: Is that a common occurrence in the industry?

David: Yes. We have that problem, too, where we send parts and we have no idea how they performed like two years later if they were good or not�

EP: Is that because it's confidential information or restricted because taxpayer money paid for it and so they won't give it to anybody?

Jerry: I think that they would like to make it more public. The Army has no prejudice against the Marines knowing what parts they've found are good. There's just no budget to do that. There's no incentive. There's no reason not to make it public. No one pushes them to do it.

Brian: Jerry, probably what you're referring to is the actual commercial product offering, the plastic parts that have been tested either by IR as part of internal quality or reliability testing or have been tested by customers or third-party or even by government agencies. And you're right. There's not a central clearinghouse for that type of data, and IR is not really incentivized to try and consolidate that data and make it available to people because everybody wants something a little bit differently and ultimately somebody has to pay for that. This is one of the problems that military users have using standard commercial components in military applications�because they want the standard commercial component, but then they also want to have all kinds of reliability data and screening data that gives them the assurance that it's going to function in their environment.

Disruptive technology
Gary: One of the things that I think you need to think about disruptive technology is from both ends of the issue�the delivering end and the receiving end. I can tell you from the delivering end, I've been on the side where we came up with a creative way to achieve an objective as compared to the way it was achieved historically. It gives you great competitive edge. It often times gives you some tremendous cost reduction. And it tends to keep your competition off guard and out of the market.

On the other hand, if you're on the receiving end and you're deeply entrenched in capitalization it's very difficult sometimes to be light on your feet and be able to move to the new approach and very costly.

David: I guess that's the dilemma we're in. We came up with a product and, unfortunately, it's not on the drawings but in some instances we were able to replace 13 individual components with one of ours and we're trying to get those people to get rid of the old technology. Sometimes that old technology is so entrenched it's hard to get them to realize there's a better thing out there.

Tom W.: We are definitely a disruptive type of technology, I guess. But you know, it doesn't mean it's all great just because you do have a technology that's a lot cheaper. What we're fighting is something where they're used to doing things a certain way�in the case of digital phase shifters and controlling them. So there's a completely different design paradigm that people have to take and change.

So what that translates into is a lot of time. And so even though everybody's all excited about them, the time to actually get something incorporated and go into a production mode is still years. That's not the case in the commercial world.

Tom C.: In terms of both disruptive technologies and what we were talking about earlier, one of our primary design approaches from here on out is developing our own intellectual property and substantiating it in an FPGA. That kind of gives us the best of all worlds because we've developed technology that's directed toward the military. We have control of it so people can't obsolete devices on us. We have the core intellectual property, and we can migrate it from device to device.

EP: So it's both a blessing and a curse depending on where you're from, but if you plan for it properly that you can usually handle it. But what if it's a truly disruptive technology that would maybe threaten the paradigms of the procurement people, the people on the military side who want these devices, the resistance to change there?

Gary: Let's take for example what is probably the largest communications program the U.S. government has ever attempted to take on. It's called GPRS and it basically says that it's to be a software-based radio. That basically says so that they can be absolutely flexible on their feet, but that means that designs, redesigns, and reprocurements are going to be a lot less likely in the future. That means that we the radio suppliers, component suppliers, RF builders, whatever�our markets are going to shrink because they no longer need to change each time they need to change.

EP: Well, Gary, won't there still be replacement costs? Wouldn't there be growth in that direction?

Gary: No, I actually really think it's quite different from that. You take the functionality, and the functionality normally implies parts count. Ten years ago the software functionality was 20%, and the hardware content was 80% and the parts count was correspondingly so. In the radios they're talking about, the software will represent nearly 90% to 95%. That means that only 10% of the product is silicon or sheet metal, and the parts count will be significantly lower.

EP: So do you see this as a widespread problem?

Gary: Well, there will always be a certain amount of hardware obviously. Software doesn't exist in free space. But the cellular industry is rapidly trying to get their cell phones into that mode because they'd like to offer new features to the customers, and they know they've either got to give the cell phone away or be able to upgrade it through software. Everything's trying to get rid of components. I think it's a real threat, and that's a disruptive technology as far as I'm concerned.

Role of the design engineer
EP: How important a role does the design engineer play in the military industry compared to the commercial industry? Is there a difference?

Simon: Yes. I think to some extent in the military market there may be more of a reluctance to move to newer technologies, or it may take a little bit longer to move to newer technologies than in the commercial world. And the design engineer may be the key to that.

EP: Do you feel that this is an engineer-based inertia or is that a management-based inertia?

Simon: I think it's a little bit of both. It's a “what we've always used in the past” type of thing. For instance with some of our products we have a standard package and we always try to make our new designs in a similar size and pinout and we try to get more in it, but it's still the same package because there's a reluctance to move away from some of those existing designs.

EP: So engineers can be their own worst enemies in development?

Simon: Sometimes, yes.

EP: How much of the resistance is “it's not invented here?” Or “I trust this old stuff” versus “I need to make it compatible for the next generation?”

Simon: All of those resistances are along those lines, and I think in the commercial world they're far more likely to move on to newer technology and try something new. And it's very much along the lines of, as I said, “That's the way we've always done it.”

Steve: I agree, and I think sometimes the design engineer�especially in the military world�is really afraid for reliability. He doesn't want to move to some new technology because it's just plain not proven and especially if it was developed for the commercial world and a lot of it was.

And I think this is how the design engineer in the military world should function. He should be very conservative. For example, one of the things we consider disruptive technology are some commercial DC/DC converter bricks. Right? They're very, very cheap. They have very good performance. And some military engineers pick these up and say, “Why can't I use this? It's a fraction of the cost. It has better performance. “

And some people are able to use them. A lot of them find out the performance is just not there for the military application. There's a noise problem or a voltage transient problem or�worse�a reliability problem that isn't found until way down the road into qualification testing: some kind of humidity failure or something like that. So the design engineer I think in the military world should be careful and should be cautious about new technologies, and I think a lot of them are.

Mark: I have a completely different approach here. It seems like change at the engineering level is directly correlated to age. The younger engineers are definitely more willing to look at new technologies, test them out, and see if they would work with them versus old timers who may not want to change. I do see a big correlation there in age.

Gary: I work in the military all the time on their requirements. And I see the issue with the older engineer, younger engineer, and whatever a little differently. The thing that I point to is components, subassemblies, things that we use in the military market�there are those parts, which shall we say are battle hardened. They've been to war. They've been there. They've been proven. They're known to be able to survive this kind of environment, and the older engineer knows that. He will tend to go to those parts because he's seen them perform. The younger engineer is a little more willing to have to go out and prove himself.

But the issue here, I think, is if you're under a lot of pressure to put together a design and be able to point to it and say it's battle hardened you would not go with innovative technology if you could avoid it. If you have a little freedom and a little time and the underwritten costs as some of the more innovative military systems are pushing us to then you really have no choice but to go with innovative, unproven non-battle hardened components and systems.

Brian: Just a comment going back to the power of the design engineer and the selection process. I think that that's something that is evolving, and design engineers actually have less power today than they had 15 years ago when it was almost absolute power. It was an environment in the defense industry that the contractor that came up with the best technology typically won the contract regardless of the price.

Now price is such a determining factor, companies are starting to get the purchasing and manufacturing and other segments of the business involved in the selection process. And they're starting to take a little bit of power away from the design engineer.

Does Mil-spec matter?
EP: The question “does Mil spec matter?” is partially linked to this about disruptive technology.

Tom C.: Actually what we're seeing is the commercial guys basically want you to test to the Mil 883 specs. So they're kind of using that stuff anyway.

EP: Do you feel that's because they just want to make their device more competitive in the marketplace as a whole, or because they have military in the back of their minds as a client?

Tom C.: Well, I think that they just are pretty good specs out there for bringing out whether something is reliable or not. And everybody knows what Mil specs are and it's very well documented so that's pretty much what they stick with.

EP: I think that if I'm making power supplies, let's say, and everything is surface mount, and I'm using very rugged multilayer boards�that's an off-the-shelf power supply. Odds are that it will pass Mil spec maybe with some potting or different packaging or something along those lines that's been brought up already. Is it that important that I specifically make it meet Mil spec or are the military's requirements too high based upon previous experience with inferior technology of the past?

Tom C.: We've had a lot of experience with taking an old military design and testing it and finding it's not as robust as they originally intended and replacing it with the commercial potted modules and finding much, much better reliability�you know, you could take that, you can vibrate it with 20 Gs. You could do all sorts of things with the commercial off-the-shelf part that you couldn't do with the military part and get much better deal reliability and much better performance.

A lot of military specs have been replaced by commercial specs. A lot of the workmanship and soldering. There are good commercial standards that replace them now�even better than the military specifications. But the military still has it's own unique environmental requirements, which in some cases the commercial parts are better than the military parts.

Gary: As an end-user supplier, my military customer requirements have not changed in spite of the fact the Mil standards have gone away. His mission objectives have not changed. That means that I have no choice but to search among my component suppliers for people who are willing to toe to the level the Mil specs used to require. Even though I cannot impose them any more.

EP: Why?

Gary: Two years ago the procurement process changed, and Mil standards are no longer allowed to be written into a contract at the customer military prime level. On the other hand, their standards of requirements have not changed.

Tom C: I think what we're seeing here is that people are getting a little bit more selective about the Mil standards. They'll ask for the cost of the product and say, “By the way, I want you to make these particular Mil standards” for the particular project.

EP: So the field is in a little bit of flux right now, but Mil spec isn't going anywhere. Is that the consensus I'm getting?

Gary: Yes. They don't even update them anymore to the best of my knowledge.

EP: And yet they still apply?

Gary: Their end-use requirements have not changed. In other words, they have to meet the same environmental, shock, and vibration requirements in exactly the Mil-spec way.