Recognizing this enormous vulnerability, the DOD recently launched its most ambitious program yet to verify the integrity of the electronics that will underpin future additions to its arsenal. The dwindling of domestic chip and electronics manufacturing in the United States, combined with the phenomenal growth of suppliers in countries like China, has only deepened the U.S. And tracing a part back to its source is not always straightforward. Estimates from other sources put the total at several hundred to more than a thousand. A single plane like the DOD’s next generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, can contain an “insane number” of chips, says one semiconductor expert familiar with that aircraft’s design. Department of Defense (DOD).įeeding those dreams is the Pentagon’s realization that it no longer controls who manufactures the components that go into its increasingly complex systems. Spectrum could not confirm this account independently, but spirited discussion about it among researchers and another defense contractor last summer at a military research conference reveals a lot about the fever dreams plaguing the U.S. If in the future the equipment fell into hostile hands, “the French wanted a way to disable that circuit,” he said. French defense contractors have used the chips in military equipment, the contractor told IEEE Spectrum. defense contractor who spoke on condition of anonymity, a “European chip maker” recently built into its microprocessors a kill switch that could be accessed remotely. That same basic scenario is cropping up more frequently lately, and not just in the Middle East, where conspiracy theories abound. By sending a preprogrammed code to those chips, an unknown antagonist had disrupted the chips’ function and temporarily blocked the radar. Post after post speculated that the commercial off-the-shelf microprocessors in the Syrian radar might have been purposely fabricated with a hidden “backdoor” inside. It wasn’t long before military and technology bloggers concluded that this was an incident of electronic warfare-and not just any kind. Among the many mysteries still surrounding that strike was the failure of a Syrian radar-supposedly state-of-the-art-to warn the Syrian military of the incoming assault. Last September, Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear installation in northeastern Syria.
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