Northrop Grumman B-2 Success Story
The B-2 Spirit first flew on July 17th, 1989, and is expected to remain operational until 2032, at which time its successor, the B-21, is anticipated to be fully fielded.
There are twenty B-2s in service today which need to be maintained.
Supporting an aircraft for multiple decades undoubtably means you will be faced with microcircuit obsolescence challenges. Northrop encountered such an issue with a multiplexer microcircuit used in one of its LRU’s.
A Source Control Drawing (SCD) for the device was submitted to SRI to evaluate to see if the multiplexer was a GEM candidate.
One of the many processes that the GEM program has developed and maintains is a high voltage BiCMOS process. It was determined that this process was a good fit and could be used to Emulate this part. A form fit function equivalent part was produced which saved Northrop from having to redesign the Line Replaceable Unit (LRU).
This would have been extremely costly to their customer. Northrop was able to successfully qualify the part both functionally and to their radiation environment the first time. A permanent solution was developed which was very beneficial to the sustainment of the product and ultimately the warfighter.