When the OEM Says No: Obsolescence Mitigation for the Undersea Fleet
Some of the hardest jobs in RF engineering start with a no. An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) looks at an aging piece of equipment they supply to the US Navy, decides it's no longer worth supporting, and declines to bid on the repair. The equipment still has a mission, though, and someone still has to keep it working.
At Radio Design Group, that's often where we come in. For the past six years, we've worked with a major defense contractor whose U.S. Navy contract covers repair and redesign work for equipment aboard the undersea fleet. As we think about the partnerships we're grateful for this November, we wanted to share what that work looks like and what it says about how we approach every project.
What Obsolescence Mitigation Means for the Department of Defense
The Department of Defense has a formal name for this challenge: Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages, or DMSMS. It describes the loss, or impending loss, of the manufacturers and suppliers behind the parts, materials, and software a system depends on.
The problem comes from two very different clocks. The commercial electronics market moves on quickly, while defense systems are built to serve for decades. Obsolescence mitigation closes that gap, keeping proven equipment in service long after its original supply chain and support have disappeared.
Why OEMs No-Bid Legacy Navy Equipment
For Nick Kanta, RDG's Operations and Quality Assurance Manager, one detail defines this partnership. "These are all repair and redesign instances where the OEM has no-bid the government," he says.
It's easy to understand why. Some of this equipment relies on computing hardware and software that are more than a decade old, and the system requires them to stay that way. For a company built around the next generation of technology, that's an unappealing job.
"Everybody is pushing ahead. Nobody looks back," Nick says. "Our secret weapon is saying yes where others say no." That yes gives the customer a way to get the work done. "Their trusted partner told them no," he adds. "So we become the new trusted partner."
Custom Engineering Services for the Undersea Fleet
The equipment in this work belongs to the signals intelligence system aboard Navy undersea platforms. It's the same system served by our RFDUs, which first entered the fleet in 2003. Today, we're performing obsolescence mitigation on early warning receivers and on the servers that control the computers handling signal distribution. For good reason, that's as specific as we'll get.
What we can share is the nature of the job. These repairs go well beyond what Nick describes as pulling off a bad piece, putting a new piece on, and sending the unit back. Our custom engineering services make the pieces fit together again, with redesign work wherever the original path has run out.
How RF Engineering Solves an Obsolete Interface Problem
SCSI is a good example. This computer interface was a great solution in the 1990s and early 2000s, but as Nick puts it, "nobody uses it anymore." That becomes a real problem when a piece of Navy equipment still sends its commands and data through a SCSI connection.
We ran into this with a signals intelligence receiver, and we wrote new software so our test equipment could communicate with the unit. That let us send commands, make the repair, and confirm the receiver was working correctly.
Now we're seeing the same interface on equipment in our shop, so we're developing software to test it the same way. The fleet relies on that interface as installed, and retrofitting everything isn't a practical answer. Our test bench has to meet the equipment where it is, the same instinct behind Medusa, the test system we built in-house.
Why Our RF Engineering Services Look Backward on Purpose
The computing world puts its talent into making things newer, faster, and quicker. That's how the industry works, and it's left a gap for the customers who can't move at that pace.
"It takes a firm such as ours to recognize that we're going to focus on what's come before and make the customer happy," Nick says. Our people spend their days studying what's already been built and finding a way for the customer to keep using it. RDG has been designing RF systems since 1992, and that history is a working asset when a job calls for looking back.
Radio Frequency Engineering Services Shaped by Defense Work, Available to Every Client
You don't need a Navy contract to benefit from this work. Commercial products lose their parts, their suppliers, and sometimes their manufacturers too. The discipline we bring to defense projects carries over to commercial clients, along with the care we take in protecting client information.
Whether your equipment needs a repair, a rebuild, or a full redesign, our radio frequency engineering services start with the same question: how do we keep this working?
A Thank-You to Our Obsolescence Mitigation Partners
To our defense partner, thank you for trusting us with equipment that matters and for bringing us the hard jobs. To the sailors of the undersea fleet, your service is why we care so much about getting this work right. And to the RDG team, thank you for saying yes.
Obsolescence Mitigation FAQ
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Obsolescence mitigation is the work of keeping equipment in service after its parts, suppliers, or manufacturer support have gone away. It can include repair, component substitution, new test systems, and circuit redesign.
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It means the original manufacturer has declined to submit a bid for the work. This often happens when equipment is old enough that supporting it no longer fits the manufacturer's business.
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In many cases, yes. A qualified engineering firm can gather the technical data, build or rebuild the test capability, source or replace obsolete parts, and redesign circuits when no substitute exists.
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Yes. RDG provides obsolescence mitigation for both defense and commercial customers, using the same engineering and test capabilities.
Has your OEM told you no? Schedule a call with our team to talk through your legacy equipment