By Bernd Lienhard, CEO, VORAGO Technologies
The Pentagon’s strategy is shifting, with military leadership pushing hard to scale autonomous systems across air, ground, and command domains. These platforms promise faster decision-making and reduced risk to personnel. But they also raise the bar for reliability in every subsystem, from processors to power management.
As autonomy takes on more responsibility for battlefield execution, silicon-level semiconductor resilience becomes a baseline requirement. These machines must make decisions and coordinate actions in real time, even when communication links are cut or conditions are hostile. Reliable chips are the infrastructure autonomy depends on.
Understanding the Hidden Threat to Autonomous Systems
High-reliability computing is difficult enough in pristine environments. On the battlefield, it's exponentially more complex. One of the most unpredictable variables is radiation.
Even on the ground, high-energy particles from space can flip bits inside semiconductors. These “single-event upsets” don’t cause visible damage, but they can silently alter logic or data in ways that disrupt operations. With defense systems growing more autonomous and more dependent on edge computing, the semiconductor industry must better understand this vulnerability.
Every radiation-induced error introduces a point of failure. For manned systems, these can often be caught or corrected. For autonomous platforms, especially those operating in swarms or contested airspace, undetected faults can cascade quickly into mission failure.
A New Procurement Standard
The Department of Defense’s shift in procurement priorities is reshaping how systems are evaluated, placing greater emphasis on real-time performance, machine-to-machine coordination, and resilience in contested environments.
As more autonomous systems move from R&D to deployment, the question of radiation resiliency will become harder to ignore. Hopeful contractors should prepare to prove that their systems can withstand random faults, including radiation-induced ones, as part of their core design.
Programs like the Army’s Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle and the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System are paving the way for this new standard. Those who plan for that future now will be better positioned to meet both today’s autonomy demands and tomorrow’s reliability requirements.
Making Radiation Resilience Scalable
Traditional radiation-hardening techniques weren’t built for this moment. Custom chip designs, exotic foundries, and small-batch production may work for space missions, but not for the thousands of autonomous vehicles the Army plans to field by the end of next year.
The next generation of military autonomy requires radiation resilience at commercial scale. That means silicon that can be produced using standard processes, integrated into modern architectures, and deployed in volume without slowing development or inflating costs.
VORAGO’s HARDSIL® technology delivers exactly that. By modifying the substrate and using conventional manufacturing flows, HARDSIL® chips are inherently radiation-tolerant and ready for harsh environments, without compromising performance or requiring major redesigns.
Trust Begins in the Chip
System-level redundancy can add protection, but it also adds weight, complexity, and delay. Autonomous warfare systems require a more elegant solution: chips that are reliable by design.
Radiation resilience built into the silicon layer enables leaner systems, faster decision loops, and greater mission assurance. It also accelerates fielding, since these chips don’t need the same long certification cycles or custom supply chains.
Defense contractors who adopt this standard early gain a key advantage: they can design systems that meet reliability requirements at the speed and scale modern autonomy demands.
A Foundation for the Autonomous Era
The military’s autonomous roadmap is clear. So are the implications for defense manufacturers. Every platform must be hardened against hidden radiation risk.
VORAGO is helping defense partners deliver on that vision. HARDSIL® brings radiation resilience to the edge, using proven processes that scale across vehicle fleets, drone swarms, and collaborative battlefield networks.
This is the new reliability standard for autonomous defense. And it starts in the silicon.
