Bishop and Associates has just released a new 13 chapter research report covering The World Military Connector Market. This report It is an extensive and comprehensive analysis of the current state and future of U.S. military and the applications that drive connector consumption. This new report is designed to help those involved in the military connector business to understand the new direction of the U.S. military and its sub-segments, and to analyze trends and forecasts. The report identifies subsystems poised for high growth and also benchmarks connector market size by category and type for 2005 and 2006, including five-year CAGRs projections to 2011.

With a military budget that is approximately equal to the sum of all the rest on the nations in the world, the U.S. is by far the largest single market for military connectors. However, the fastest growing defense budget is that of China. With economic growth bolstering the overall economy, China is busy adding to its military capabilities.

The connector industry will see a trend toward increasing numbers of commercial products being used in building-block design approaches.  This shift is being fueled by the 1994 Department of Defense (DOD) Commercial off-the-Shelf directive that is now well underway. COTS has allowed the military to move away from the traditional ten-year programs of past decades and embrace the advanced technologies of the commercial sector.  Gone are the days of application-specific designs that resulted in the military lagging behind the commercial sector by five to ten years.  Although no new military specifications will be issued for connector designs, traditional mil-spec connectors will continue provide military applications with interconnect solutions for decades to come.

World Military Connector Market by Sector

Circular connectors do a significant business on cables routed through bulkheads and connected to the system I/O. Some benign environments have allowed the use of commercial connectors, but in the field, the mil-spec connector is still required.

World Circular Military Connector Market

The conversion to data buses, from conventional wiring harnesses, combined with environmentally controlled electronics bays in aircraft, ships and ground fighting vehicles, allows commercially available (non mil-spec) connectors of various materials to be used in applications that traditionally were reserved for only full mil-spec designs. This was made possible by the DOD’s cancellation of many defense standards in the 1990s.  In their place, the DOD issued performance specifications that described the desired features and encouraged the use of industry standards, such as ISO 9000 for quality assurance, or IEEE standards.

The United States is by far the global leader in military spending. It alone accounts for 47 percent of the world’s total military spending. The U.S. and its allies, the NATO countries, Japan, South Korea and Australia spend a combined $950 billion on militaries, 70 percent of the world total. In the ensuing years following the end Cold War, the traditional military market experienced steep declines. Then, the attacks on our country from within by terrorists groups in September 2001 launched the U.S. into an aggressive Global War on Terrorism.  New threats from nations that harbor and support terrorists and jeopardize not only our country, but the entire western world with weapons of mass destruction and the threats of cyber warfare demand that our military transform itself into a 21st Century urban warfighter. The military is emerging into a more complex and comprehensive structure. Military spending reached record levels in 2005. Much of the funding in the 2006 budget reflects real-world experience from the war in Iraq, and worldwide counter-terrorism operations. Although advanced weapons systems are an element of transformation, new operational concepts and over-arching command, control, communications, and computers – together with better intelligence, will also leverage dramatic improvements in combat power. Part of the challenge in transforming the military is making difficult tradeoffs between programs.  Most new programs are costly and will be available to military forces, in some instances, decades in the future. Before the department decides to buy a new system, it must ensure that the system both has a mission linked to the overall national security strategy and is affordable.  The 2004 Budget reflects many areas where the Administration reduced or modified programs because prior plans were not consistent with the new strategy, or because growing costs became indefensible.