Microelectronics Innovation for National Security and Economic Competitiveness (MINSEC) Innovation and Development

Abstract

This project supports the DoD microelectronics strategy by ensuring the availability of and access to advanced, assured microelectronics that are critical for DoD and national security systems. It will support the development and delivery of tools to protect the intellectual property (IP) confidentiality and integrity across the full microelectronics life cycle for a broad range of systems and missions and will provide a path for the production of these articles. It will allow DoD to: 1) provide multiple options for programs and the defense industrial base to rapidly modernize state-of-the-art (SOTA) microelectronic components; 2) promote access to all needed current and future semiconductor technologies, including design, fabrication, packaging, and testing, from a robust base of commercially sustainable suppliers; 3) maintain technological leadership and a secure domestic microelectronics ecosystem to create a competitive industrial base of microelectronics suppliers that can rapidly adjust to the dynamics of the industry including the initiation of modernization pilots with DoD programs and industry to prototype and demonstrate new capabilities; and 4) provide DoD’s captive specialty needs suppliers and dedicated facilities with cost-effective upgrade capabilities and resources so they can deliver advanced technologies. This project supports a broader national strategy to focus resources, policies, and incentives to enhance current and next generation defense capability by: 1) maintaining access to U.S. domestic production of SOTA technology; 2) enhancing state-of-the-practice (SOTP) foundries in the U.S. to produce more advanced technologies to better serve low-volume customers in the aerospace and defense community; 3) investing in research and development (R&D) for the next generation of microelectronics for new materials, devices, architectures, and designs in coordination with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI); 4) promoting threat awareness, proactive protection, and supply chain security to ensure these investments continue to benefit the U.S.; 5) exploring incentives for market growth through dual-use technologies, piloting acquisition reforms, partnering with industry, and providing incentives for cooperative R&D and trade; and 6) establishing innovation hub pilots with industry. MINSEC activities are categorized into the following focus areas: access to specialized SOTA and dual use microelectronics technology, collection and analysis of data for metrics driven quantifiable assurance, maintaining and enhancing U.S capability though development, capture and secure, and transition of next generation microelectronics technology insertion; microelectronics-focused workforce development; radiation hardening by process (RHBP) and radiation hardening by design (RHBD); and radio frequency (RF) and optoelectronic (OE) microelectronics. This project in FY 2020 funds the following focus areas: SOTA access through secure design, packaging, and enhanced foundry access; development and maturation of commercially viable quantifiable assurance technologies; capture and secure microelectronics R&D; new microelectronics development and capability insertion; RHBP and RHBD; and RF and OE microelectronics.

Document Details

• Document Type: Project
• Publication Date: Oct 01, 2022
• Source ID: 647_0604294D8Z_4_0400_PB_2022

Tags

Readers

• Cybersecurity.
• Defense Technology Research and Development.
• Integrated Circuit Design and Technology.

Technology Areas

• Microelectronics
• Space