Rugged Displays

– Defining ‘rugged’, pros and cons.

COTS initiatives have created a bit of a conundrum for engineers specifying military hardware. Today’s displays for military, defense, and aerospace applications fall into four main categories.

COTS Displays:

These are true commercial-off-the-shelf products that can be purchased at any electronics store

Pro: Cheap and readily available
Con: Optimized for benign office environments only – not suitable for any harsh environment

“COTS-in-a-Box”:

These displays generally are internally the same as COTS products, but are repackaged with metal housings.

Pro: Offer some level of exterior protection
Con: Cost/performance ratio. Can cost 10X a COTS display with little increase in protection.

Rugged COTS:

Typically these are not only externally repackaged, but are also internally improved to meet shock, vibration, thermal, and sealing specifications.

Pro: Offer good value for most applications that require rugged displays
Con: Specifications can vary greatly. Care should be taken when specifying to ensure the right ‘rugged’ characteristics are provided for the application.

MIL-spec and application-specific displays:

While the ‘glass’ used in displays is available only from a limited number of suppliers, often that is the only thing these have in common with their COTS cousins. These are generally built from scratch and designed and tested to specific MIL standards and/or for very specific customer applications.

Pro: Specifically optimized for individual applications ensuring optimal performance
Con: Cost. Low volume and high-level specialization has a big price.

Conclusion: “Rugged” means different things to different people. Know your desired performance and specify accordingly.