Navy orders diminishing manufacturing sources (DMS) FPGAs to keep F-35s and other military aircraft flying
PATUXENT RIVER NAS, Md. – The U.S. Navy is buying more than $40 million worth of obsolescent field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to ensure the long-term operation and maintenance of the F-35 joint strike fighter and other military aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps., and allied military forces.
Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., announced a $41.5 million order Monday to the Lockheed Martin Corp. Aeronautics segment in Fort Worth, Texas, to procure Xilinx and Intel-Altera Diminishing Manufacturing Sources (DMS) parts that have reached end-of-life.
FPGAs are configurable computer processors with large amounts of logic gates and RAM blocks to implement complex digital computations. The devices can carry out any logical function that an that an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), yet are less expensive to produce, and are more flexible in their use.
These so-called lifetime buys by Lockheed Martin from FPGA suppliers Xilinx Inc. in San Jose, Calif., and Intel Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif., are to support future deliveries U.S. and allied military aircraft and maintenance. Intel closed its acquisition of FPGA designer Altera Corp. in December 2015.
Related: Millions of dollars awarded for thousands of FPGAs going into F-35 Joint Strike Fighters
The communications, navigation, and identification friend or foe (IFF) avionics of the F-35 relies on Xilinx FPGAs, as do other critical electronic subsystems aboard the advanced jet. FPGAs enable Lockheed Martin to add new waveforms to embedded software radio systems in the F-35, as well as for real-time digital signal processing.
This order illustrates a dilemma that military leaders face as they find ways of keeping military electronic systems fielded, functioning, and upgraded over decades, as opposed to suppliers of electronic components like FPGAs that offer their parts for a much shorter time.
Electronic parts suppliers like Xilinx and Intel must follow the whims of the commercial electronics market, which demands new generations of parts every several years. Military systems designers, on the other hand, often must design electronics based on specific generations of components. To keep these systems functioning, they often must use obsolescent parts, or risk time-consuming and expensive system re-designs.
Five years ago Navy officials awarded a $104.7 million order to Lockheed Martin to procure Xilinx FPGAs to support long-term F-35 production.
On this order Lockheed Martin will do the work in Fort Worth, Texas, and should be finished by February 2019. For more information contact Lockheed Martin Aeronautics online at www.lockheedmartin.com, Xilinx at www.xilinx.com, Intel at www.intel.com, or Naval Air Systems Command at www.navair.navy.mil.
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John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
