Commercial electronics in DoD applications: the minimum requirements

Best Commercial Practice, “COTS”, ruggedized plastic packaging, HAST, encapsulation, etc. To those of us that are deep into the latest trend to cost reduce the microelectronics devices as used by the DoD and civilian/military space programs, these terms as well as the reliability limits they infer are fairly well understood, or are they? This paper presents an overview of the reliability data and its sources which have allowed the DoD device supplier to venture into the world of non-hermetic device technologies. The discussion presented at times unfortunately appears to conjure up the old question about the origins of the chicken or the egg. We live in a dynamic society and yet we require our program officers and contract administrators to lock down, in definitive terms, all of the requirements for performance and reliability necessary for each and every project we engage upon. Meanwhile we demand change so that the systems become smaller, lighter, faster and still be reliable. This indeed becomes a very difficult set of marching orders. Yet these changes will occur and the customer will still get the quality and reliability he seeks