Design for Military, Aerospace and Defence
Demonstrable expertise in the design and development of equipment for use by the military, in aerospace or homeland security.
We have designed systems and components for a wide range of commercial and military aircraft, helicopters, seafaring and sub-sea vehicles, land vehicles as well as equipment that is carried by personnel.
Typically, such equipment needs to meet exacting standards for a wide range of criteria, including robustness, functional performance and the effects of harsh mechanical, climatic and electromagnetic environments including TEMPEST.
We have found that (for good reason) there is often a desire to not stray too far from tried and tested materials, processes and principals but by bringing experience of trusted practices from other industry sectors we have on occasion challenged the status quo and introduced new materials, technologies and practices that are becoming used more extensively. Evidence that the mil/aero sector is becoming more receptive to this is can be seen in the drive to incorporate “COTS” (commercial off-the-shelf) products in order to improve Time-to-Market, decrease cost and de-risk supply chains.
When designing equipment for avionic applications or when intended to be carried by personnel the performance criteria need to be met with an extreme focus on the total system mass and these projects give us the opportunity to show what we can do to optimize structural or thermal performance whilst keeping a careful watch on mass constraints. This invariably warrants a very close look at materials and new technologies to ensure that those chosen deliver the very best performance.
We have particular expertise in the mechanical packaging of cryptographic devices to various levels of tamper resistance and tamper evidence as defined by FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards).