Defence and Commercial Aerospace Electronic Components.

The term electronic components refers to integrated circuits, resistors, diodes, transistors, and other electronic devices packaged individually as piece parts. Aerospace electronics has developed with the jet aircraft.

Although electronic components and systems are not the largest cost elements in military or commercial aerospace, they are ubiquitous: electronic components are to be found in almost every system, including those that are primarily mechanical, hydraulic or pneumatic. In the early days, military and commercial aerospace manufacturers depended on a well-developed military electronic components infrastructure to assure long-term availability of components. This was because the military market comprised about 25% of the total market; it was responsible for a good deal of the innovation, and therefore had patented many device designs. As a result, military and commercial aerospace electronic design, manufacturing, procurement, operation, maintenance, and support decisions have been based on the unlimited supply and longevity of the design.
Neither in fact are the case.

Aerospace industry now consumes less than one per cent of the electronic components produced. The major component markets are computers, consumer electronics, and the like, which do not have the demanding environmental or long production life cycle requirements of aerospace products; so the availability of aerospace electronic components is decreasing.

There is no vertical supply chain for electronic components. The life cycles of all integrated circuit technologies are shrinking. Low volume users such as aerospace are rarely considered. The industry has adapted to using electronic components produced for other industries that are quite different.

The aerospace industry has responded vigorously to the problem of component obsolescence. The benefits of cooperation far outweigh the costs of competition. The aerospace electronics industry has found that, while unable to control the sources of electronic components, it is possible to control Component Quality Assurance, Component Compatibility with the Equipment Manufacturing Process, the collection, storage, retrieval, and analysis of performance data, configuration and traceability. This is called Component Obsolescence Management.

The aerospace industry cannot control the sources of most of its electronic components, and the short production lives of components produced for other markets has caused a
severe component obsolescence problem. So far, the major response of the aerospace industry has been to seek sources of existing components that meet their needs. In the long term using components manufactured for other industries will be necessary.

Counterfeit aircraft electronic components.

Obsolescence in electronic systems design has prompted a market in counterfeit electronic components which appear genuine, but which actually are substandard, altogether different, or in the worst cases, simply empty packages. Counterfeit integrated circuits (ICs), capacitors, amplifiers, batteries, connectors, power-management devices, and other electronic parts already are making their way into mission-critical military and aerospace systems, some of which depend on the utmost reliability.

Some of these electronic components simply begin life as manufacturing overruns. Some come from well-meaning manufacturers who believe they have equivalent parts. Others come from unscrupulous shops seeking to exploit a hot market and a trusting set of buyers.

Since the 1990s the military has moved away from mil-spec components and now relies almost exclusively on commercial manufacturers for aerospace electronic components. The benefits of this approach are that competition between several suppliers results in the lowest possible cost to the buyer. Systems integrators who need hard-to-find parts cannot always obtain them from the parts manufacturers or from reliable distributors. Sometimes the only sources of parts are small brokers who cannot provide the documentation to prove the pedigree of their offerings.

There have been cases of faulty capacitors in printed circuits. Engineers should buy components only from manufacturers and authorised distributors who can provide the documentation necessary for full traceability components. When this is not possible, buyers should demand the paperwork to identify the manufacturing source. Systems integrators need to know their independent distributors, and buy only from the brokers they know and have done business with successfully for a long time. Everyone involved in the military electronics industry must find a way to eradicate counterfeit electronic components.