Ruggedization of Electronics for Deployed Military Environments

Some environmental constraints for deployed military computing systems are operational temperature, humidity, sand, dust, vibration, shock/basic, leakage (immersion), steam and water jet cleaning, rapid decompression, contamination by fluids (e.g. oil, fuel, cleaning), nuclear hardness, and input voltage. In addition, the type of platform or vehicle on which the electronics are to be placed will have its own typical operating environments and related ruggedization requirements. For example, tracked combat vehicles, such as tanks, will have quite different requirements compared to wheeled tactical vehicles, so immersion, while not typically a requirement for tactical vehicles, but will be a requirement for tactical combat vehicles because they will need to be able to ford through water.

The ruggedization requirements for different environments are well defined. For example, ground combat vehicle environments are covered by the US Army CCDC GVSC Automotive Tank Purchase Description: Interface Standard - Environmental Conditions for the Heavy Brigade Combat Team Tracked Vehicle Standard (ATPD-2404 21-OCT-2011) and newer revisions. This relatively straightforward and short document pulls together a number of standards (e.g. MIL-STD-810) by reference to provide operational environment constraints that must be considered for any materiel solutions intended for use within ground combat platforms. In short, any equipment within such a platform will suffer wide temperature ranges, high shock, lots of vibration, and a dirty environment, among the many other environmental conditions rarely if ever considered for commercial electronic systems - most specifically computing systems - that were originally designed for operation in commercial benign environments (e.g. home, office, server room, data center).