Military platforms often last for decades, long past the life spans of modern computing components and boards. System designers for these aging platforms must rely on a variety of solutions from lifetime buys of components when they go end of life to working with aftermarket suppliers, who buy obsolete product lines and keep producing them for customers with ultra long-term needs. In this podcast with Ethan Plotkin, CEO of GDCA, we discuss military aftermarket trends, open architectures, artificial intelligence, and how sustainment reform can help solve long-term obsolescence challenges get in defense applications.

What happens when defense programs can no longer get support for obsolete electronics circuit cards, like computer boards, graphics cards, power supply controllers and many more specialized electronics assemblies that make defense systems “smart”? These circuit card assemblies (CCAs) are often commercial products that have been discontinued by their OEMs.

BOHEMIA, New York and LIVERMORE, Calif. Rugged embedded computing supplier North Atlantic Industries (NAI) and long-term embedded support provider GDCA Inc. announced the successful transfer of NAI's venerable 64C1 & 64D1 legacy product lines, renowned for their reliability and longstanding service to the U.S. Navy, to GDCA. 

By Lynnette Reese

Dealing with military users who still want obsolete products is not a new problem for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), who make more revenue on the latest products as users migrate away from mature products to faster, better versions. However, people don’t always jump quickly to the next revision because they can’t upgrade an entire system when one electronics card is no longer available. In the military realm, mature systems can remain in use for decades.