Navy to work with industry to find ways of hardening COTS electronics to nuclear explosions

April 14, 2015
CRANE, Ind., 14 April 2015. U.S. Navy researchers are working with working with industry and academia to find new ways to create radiation-hardened commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronics from the effects of radiation from the explosion of nuclear weapons.
CRANE, Ind., 14 April 2015. U.S. Navy researchers are working with working with industry and academia to find new ways to create radiation-hardened commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronics from the effects of radiation from the explosion of nuclear weapons.

Officials of the Naval Surface Weapons Center in Crane, Ind., invited companies and colleges last week (N0016415SNB38) to work with the Navy to evaluate the survivability of COTS electronics that are exposed to the radiation of nuclear explosions.

Research will involve evaluating modern electronics when they undergo severe changes in behavior when exposed to nuclear radiation. Navy experts particularly are interested in simulations long-term exposure to radiation, as well as high levels of radiation during the first minute of a nuclear explosion.

Navy researchers are exploring how modern COTS electronics can withstand radiation damage long- and short-term radiation exposure, with an eye to using survivable COTS electronics in major defense acquisition programs.

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Research also will involve radiation-hardened microelectronic devices like discretes, integrated circuits, application-specific integrated circuits, magnetoresistive random-access memory chips, micro-electro-mechanical systems, and field-programmable gate arrays.

Organizations with this kind of research expertise should email responses no later than 8 April 2016 to the Navy's Brooke Pyne at [email protected].

For questions or concerns contact Brooke Pyne by phone at 812-854-4823, or by email at [email protected]. More information is online at https://www.fbo.gov/spg/DON/NAVSEA/N00164/N0016415SNB38/listing.html.

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