The life cycle of many electronics systems is a long one often spanning decades and even generations. The F-16 is 42 years old and the B-52 is old enough to collect social security. However, both systems are still active and still need to be maintained even though they may be on third or fourth generation electronics. Industry is full of electronic systems that were developed over twenty years ago. Many of these are based on technologies, or at least products that can no longer be replaced or repaired.
As firms and particularly the military try to keep their systems operational, there has been a major shift to replacing legacy systems with COTS, or nearly COTS based systems. This presentation, sponsored by UEI, will describe some of the challenges and solutions to replacing these legacy systems with new COTS based hardware.