COTS to MOTS
An increasing trend for government departments is to purchase systems or equipment which have been developed previously for different sectors or EMC environments. There are apparent advantages for the procurement of commercial equipment in terms of cost, availability, spares and proven functionality. However, challenges arise when integrating equipment to a military platform or applying to a military standard, which is substantially more onerous than the RF environment the system was designed and qualified to.
A common scenario WEMEC is frequently requested to undertake, is to qualify COTS (Commercial of the Shelf System) to a defence or military standard and make the system MOTS (Military of the Shelf System). As the COTS is normally made up of multiple components, that have been tested to commercial standards in isolation and the system EMC performance is often unknown, this makes it increasingly challenging to achieve.
WEMEC’s highly experienced team has successfully applied the process shown below for many years, either working in-conjunction with the supplier’s design team or leading activities on behalf of the supplier. The process and experience of WEMEC, ensures the requirements are met in the most cost and time efficient way possible, whilst achieving compliance.,
The following high-level process is applied by WEMEC to ensure success in the most efficient way possible:
