St. Charles, IL – With a military budget that is approximately equal to the sum of all the rest on the nations in the world, the U.S. is by far the largest single market for military connectors. However, the fastest growing defense budget is that of China, says a new report by Bishop and Associates.

According to the group, the world military market for connectors continues to grow, totalling $2.329 billion in 2004. The most significant change comes from the growing use of non-mil spec connectors in a market that was once virtually off limits to commercial suppliers.

Today, mil spec connectors can no longer meet the technology requirements of the military. It is the consensus of the military, major platform integrators and weapon system OEMs, that no new mil spec connectors will be developed. The military is forced to look to the commercial connector sector to meet new military connector needs.

The report examines the military hardware development process and the new initiatives that will help the military to regain the ability to produce state of the art equipment. The military has seen its position of technology leadership deteriorate to one of trailing the commercial industry by a decade or more in some areas.

The requirement to use mil standard technology components has been a major contributor to the performance gap, according to Bishop & Assoc. While the commercial industry transfers data over buses that operate at Gigabit speeds, the military was forced to use standards like Mil-Std-1553 operating at only 1 megabit. New directives have resulted in military platforms abandoning the old mil spec technology for commercial technology to be able to perform at the desired level in the future.

However, when it comes to interconnecting systems, mil-spec connectors still dominate, because conditioning of the environment is less possible. Circular connectors still do a significant business as cables are routed through bulkheads and connected to the system I/O. Some benign environments have allowed the use of commercial connectors, but in the field, the mil spec connector is still required.

In facilitating the use of commercial connectors, system designers must condition the environment in which these components operate.The report provides insight into the required level of ruggedness and how Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) parts are being utilized, either directly or modified to meet requirements. The short life cycles of commercial designs places additional constraints on the military and the supply chain.

While a move to COTS based systems for new designs is a reality, full mil spec connectors still make up the bulk of the present military market and circular connectors continue to be major players.