Why passive parts are defence’s quiet supply chain problem

The defence industry has long understood that the electronics underpinning modern platforms age faster than the platforms themselves. A Type 26 frigate will serve the Royal Navy into the 2060s. The Eurofighter Typhoon will have a lifespan of five decades if not more. The semiconductors, passives and connectivity hardware specified at the design stage, in some cases a decade before the first operational use, will almost certainly have ceased production long before the platform reaches its mid-life upgrade, let alone disposal.

This gap between platform lifecycle and component lifecycle is the central challenge of what the defence industry calls Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages (DMSMS) and it is not a new problem. What has changed is the pace at which it is getting worse.

A tighter squeeze

The semiconductor shortages that convulsed global manufacturing between 2020 and 2023 were a visible and acute expression of a structural issue that programme managers in defence and aerospace have dealt with for decades. The crisis exposed just how concentrated the supply base for critical electronic components had become, and how quickly access to even relatively standard parts could disappear when commercial demand shifted. For defence primes and their tier-two suppliers, the legacy of that period is a heightened sensitivity to single-source dependencies and a renewed focus on lifecycle planning. Supply chain shortfall or failure is par for the course now.

That concern has not gone away. Geopolitical pressure on semiconductor supply, particularly the concentration of advanced fabrication capacity in Taiwan and East Asia, continues to ramp up and present a strategic risk that procurement teams are having to plan around explicitly. The UK’s own National Semiconductor Strategy, published in 2023, acknowledged the vulnerability and committed to strengthening domestic and allied supply chain resilience, though translating that ambition into programme-level risk mitigation remains a work in progress.

Alongside genuine scarcity sits a related threat: the counterfeit component problem. When authorised supply dries up and end-of-life notices are issued, the grey market expands to fill the gap. For defence electronics, where the consequences of a failed component can be operational rather than simply commercial, the introduction of counterfeit or substandard parts into the supply chain carries risks that extend well beyond financial loss. Standards such as AS6081 and SAE AS5553 exist precisely to address this — but compliance requires that procurement teams know they are approaching an end-of-life event in time to qualify authorised alternates before they are forced into the open market.

The connectivity layer: underweighted in lifecycle planning

Much of the industry’s obsolescence management resource is focused on active electronics: processors, FPGAs, ASICs and the memory and power management components that surround them. The rationale is straightforward, after all, active components tend to cycle fastest, carry the highest unit cost and are most directly tied to platform capability.

What receives less systematic attention is the connectivity layer: the connectors, cable assemblies, and network interface hardware that carry data and power through a platform’s architecture. These parts are often specced very early on, integrated deeply into the physical structure of a platform and treated as commodity items with assumed long availability. In practice, the commercial electronics industry drives the production economics of many connector and cable assembly form factors, and when those markets move on, as they inevitably do, defence programmes that locked in a specific interface standard can find themselves with a connectivity architecture that is no longer supported from authorised sources.

This is particularly relevant to network connectivity. As platforms have become more data-centric, with internal networks carrying sensor fusion data, battle management system traffic, and link feeds, the network hardware embedded in those platforms has become increasingly critical to mission capability. Ethernet standards, SFP transceiver form factors and fibre interface specifications that were current at design freeze may be superseded by the time a platform enters service, let alone across its operational life.

ATGBICS addresses the gap

Against this backdrop, Dorset based ATGBICS, a franchised manufacturer specialising in network connectivity components with particular coverage of the defence, aerospace and industrial sectors, has published a white paper setting out a structured approach to obsolescence management specifically for the network connectivity layer. Astute, global leaders in this field, are a franchised ATGBICS partner, can support customers applying this framework to their own bills of materials, identifying those at-risk connectivity parts and sourcing qualified alternates ahead of end-of-life.

The paper, “Strategic Approaches to Obsolescence Management in Network Connectivity,” is aimed at OEM engineers and programme managers working on long-lifecycle platforms, and at the procurement and supply chain teams responsible for sustaining them. Its focus is deliberate: rather than covering electronic component obsolescence in the round, it addresses an area that the company argues has historically received less proactive lifecycle planning than the active electronics it supports.

The framework it sets out covers anticipating end-of-life events, qualifying authorised alternates before shortages become production-critical, and engaging franchised distribution partners early enough to preserve options. For programmes that are already committed to a specific connector or cabling architecture with limited redesign headroom (which describes most platforms beyond initial design), that early engagement window matters considerably.

The broader lesson

Obviously the white paper is a product of one company, but the underlying problem it addresses is real, well-documented, and growing in urgency. The MoD’s own acquisition guidance on DMSMS has long emphasised that proactive management, identifying risk early and qualifying alternates through authorised supply chains, costs a fraction of reactive management, which typically involves emergency sourcing, schedule slippage, or in the worst cases redesign of hardware that is already integrated into a fielded platform.

For programme teams, the lesson is consistent across the literature: obsolescence management cannot be deferred until a shortage occurs. By the time an end-of-life notice translates into a production-stopping event, the options available are almost invariably fewer and more expensive than they would have been had the risk been flagged and addressed earlier. The connectivity layer is, on that evidence, worth putting on the same proactive footing as the active electronics it carries.

The white paper is available through the Astute Group website.

Obsolescence of equipment and components on platforms that are decades old is common enough, but it even seems to be an issue for supposedly up to date aeroplanes – Avbrief.com  recently reported that the two new Airforce One aircraft currently in production for the US Government will be victims of obsolescence. They have a secret communications system installed in the two new VC-25B aircraft that will pose a security threat before the delivery of the aircraft in 2028. “The current Mission Communication System (MCS) baseline is not viable past CY 2028 due to cybersecurity and obsolescence issues,” the Air Force said in an update issued in April and declassified in August.