New and efficient approaches to cabinet and console design, fabrication, integration, and qualification are enabling prime defense contractors to quickly equip the U.S. Navy with better electronics technology and enclosures while increasing return on investment.

New technologies such as virtualisation, sensor improvements and data fusion are enhancing the effect of CMS on modern fleets, allowing greater range and faster transfer of critical information.

Industry standards and guidelines such as MOSA, SOSA, CMOSS, SAVE, and FACE are driving the latest developments in enclosures, chassis, and backplane databuses, as small for factors are ready to take center stage.

Some environmental constraints for deployed military computing systems are operational temperature, humidity, sand, dust, vibration, shock/basic, leakage (immersion), steam and water jet cleaning, rapid decompression, contamination by fluids (e.g. oil, fuel, cleaning), nuclear hardness, and input voltage.

The proliferation of connected systems has been enabled by the U.S. military embrace of the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) revolution.

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components are being embraced so the technology can be serviced at the base instead of waiting for specialized parts or sending the system back state-side.

Aaron Frank and Ivan Straznicky look at VITA 47. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard VITA 47 gives system integrators a baseline for reliable and rugged products.

ANSI/VITA 47 is an American National Standards Institute standard that defines a rigorous test regime, enabling vendors to demonstrate that their VPX product is designed to perform optimally, while complying with specific environmental, manufacture, safety and quality criteria.