Why Should We Pay Attention to the Failure Rate of Military Connectors?

In military weaponry and various electronic systems, connectors are essential basic components for connecting devices and components, components and stand-alone, stand-alone and stand-alone, systems and systems. In military weapons and equipment such as aviation, aerospace, weapons, and naval vessels, it plays an important role in the transmission of energy and signals through electrical connections.

Military connectors are the most commonly used electronic components that make up aircraft, missiles, ships and other weapon systems. For example, a modern fighter plane uses a cable length of 5 to 10 kilometers, and there are about 800 to more than 1,000 electrical connectors for one time.

The total cable length of a large passenger aircraft is 250 kilometers, and more than 4,500 electrical connectors are provided at a time. Its main function is to complete the electrical connection between the host, engine, onboard control system and onboard equipment. The seekers, warheads, engines, autopilots and other key components of various types of tactical missiles all use the connector as a basic component to form a complete weapon system with hundreds of thousands of contact points. The eye-catching Shenzhou spacecraft uses more than 500 sets of various connectors only for the propulsion compartment and power supply system, and more than 400 sets of various electrical connectors are used for a certain type of tactical missile only for ground equipment.

Among all the connectors that make up the military equipment system, as long as any one of the connectors fails, it may lead to paralysis, failure, and major accidents of the entire system.

Among all the electronic components that make up the military equipment system, military grade electrical connectors seem to have a simple structure and is often ignored, but its failure probability is the highest.

According to relevant statistics, connector failure probability accounts for about 40-50% of the total number of failure cases of electronic components that make up the system. Interconnection issues are one of the main reasons for the failure of most military electronic equipment. It is often the connection point, wire termination point or contact interface that fails first.

It is generally believed that there are three normal failure modes of connectors: open circuit (probability 61%); poor contact (instant open circuit) (probability 23%); short circuit (probability 16%). Due to its relatively complex structure, special function (separable electrical connection) and many abnormal factors, it is difficult to accurately quantify the failure rate of military style electrical connectors, and it has become the only electronic component that has not been classified into failure rate levels.