Commercial-Components Initiative: Ground Benign Systems-plastic encapsulated microcircuits

The purpose of the Commercial Components Initiative-Ground Benign Systems was to determine if commercial off-the-shelf PEM (plastic-encapsulated microcircuits) are suitable for use in ground-benign, dynamically-fixed military electronic systems. If so, they could replace the more expensive components presently specified by DoD (US Dept. of Defense), resulting in appreciable life-cycle cost savings. At issue is whether the components produced for the commercial industry are reliable and durable enough to withstand the environments and life expectancies of military systems. Reliability was not formally proven. A more practical informal reliability test for this project, which DSD dubbed Run for Reliability, was to install the PCB in the system and let the operational hours accrue beyond the subsystem and Signal Processor lifetime allocations. The Run for Reliability shows promise that commercial hardware could be proven in a formal reliability demonstration test.