Keeping Defense Platforms Alive in a World of Decreasing Semiconductor Availability
Originally, defense was the main driver of semiconductor design, and the two industries aligned well. In the decades since, the semiconductor business has become dominated by the needs of the commercial sector, with defense usually an afterthought. One consequence of this is that the availability of many commercial semiconductor parts useful to the defense industry can be measured in months, or at most a handful of years. This has a profound impact on the defense industry. In parallel, many countries are also choosing to extend the working life of big defense platforms rather than invest in ground-up replacements.
This paper looks at ways of successfully managing the supply of critical semiconductor parts over the long-term using Teledyne e2v’s Semiconductor Lifecycle Management (SLiM™) program.