Pentagon microelectronics maker: no order too small.

• Author: Peck, Michael

Need a carburetor for an old Chevy? Try a junkyard. Need a few integrated circuits for a brand-new F-22 fighter jet? That is a problem. No one produces them anymore.

Commercial manufacturers won't touch such a small order--500 parts over 10 years isn't a moneymaker. So the Defense Department turned to its in-house microclectronics manufacturer.

From behind the beige wills of a nondescript building on a former Air Force base in Sacramento, Calif., the Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA) offers a small but potent capability to reverse engineer, redesign, miniaturize and manufacture small quantities of integrated circuits and memory chips.

DMEA has the ultimate niche market. With the spare-parts shortage certain to grow as aging platforms suffer from aging electronics, the organization currently has received or is managing $400 million worth of projects.

In addition to the Air Force F-22 air superiority fighter, DMEA's list of finished and ongoing programs includes electronic components for the B-2 B-1 and B-52 bombers, the F-14 naval warplane, the C-5 cargo aircraft, as well as the Army's Apache Longbow gunship and the Multiple Launch Rocket System.

"Let's say that you have an aircraft with a 40year life. Probably every five to seven years there will be a whole series of modifications," said DMEA deputy director Earl Hendricks. "Yet there is a very high likelihood that there are significant numbers of integrated circuits that you can't buy anymore."

The typical lifecycle for microelectronics is just 18 months, and commercial manufacturers change their product lines every two or three years. The F-22 has not even entered operational service, "and already we are redesigning integrated circuits because the process line the components were designed on was shut down," Hendricks said.

DMEA's niche is that its foundry can respond to small, custom orders for microelectronics more cheaply and quickly than its commercial counterparts. The F-22 needed truly 500 parts to replace Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) in its power system, which spanned seven different power supplies, two power conditioners and a power converter.

However, most commercial manufacturers require a minimum order of 20 to 25 wafers whose production can...