New-Tech Europe | December 2016 | Didital Edition

COTS + and DSCC parts emerge as alternatives to MIL-STD

Lee Thompson, TTI Inc.

smaller, lighter, faster – maybe even cheaper – parts will not yet have had a MIL-STD created for them, or of it has, the manufacturer may not yet have received approval. Luckily a couple of alternatives are emerging. COTS+ Many engineers will have heard the term COTS – Commercial Off- The-Shelf. In the USA, COTS is a Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) term for commercially-available items and services that can be bought and used under government contract. It has come to be a widely used term, and the concept appears especially appealing in the light of defence budget cuts and restrictions. However, to put it

performance’ parts is the US defence standard known as MIL -STD. A huge variety of electronic components – active, passive, emech, interconnect, hybrid and even sub-systems – are covered by various different MIL- STDs which govern the manufacture and testing of the parts in question. All well and good, but there is a problem. MIL-STD numbers are associated with a specific component. Developing MIL-STDs for new parts is a long process, and once the standard is developed, for a component manufacturer to get that part listed is a long a costly process. What this means is that engineers working on designs that require high performance, high reliability components will be limited to older technology components, as new

Unfortunately, and as much as some would like you to believe, standard parts are generally not of a high enough performance or quality to be suitable for use in harsh environments, such as defence, aerospace and space applications. Extremes of shock, vibration and temperature, extended life cycles, possible attack by gases and liquids require components that have been designed to work under specific and often very demanding conditions. Not only that, but they must be ultra- reliable…often such applications simply must not fail, either because failure would risk life, or the cost of failure would be astronomical (sometimes literally!). The most widely specified and used standard governing such ‘high-

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