Engineers revive unusable legacy chips for 1,200-mph F/A-18 fighter jet in just 30 days

Phoenix Semiconductor engineers helped NAVAIR recover a supply of unusable legacy chips for a safety-critical system on the F/A-18 Super Hornet. The devices support the aircraft’s Bleed Air Leak Detection Control Unit, or BALDCU. The system controls bleed air delivered to pilots through their oxygen masks. NAVAIR had replacement chips available, but engineers could not put them into service. The devices lacked the programming needed for the aircraft system, leaving the Navy with inventory it could not readily use. Phoenix said it solved the problem in less than 30 days. The work required engineers to determine how the chips behaved before developing a way to program them correctly. Unclear programming path The team did not have a standard programming procedure for the devices. Engineers instead treated the chips as a black box and studied their behavior. That meant probing the components and characterizing their functions. The results helped engineers reconstruct the programming requirements needed for the BALDCU. NAVAIR had faced a shrinking supply of the critical devices. A deputy assistant program manager with PMA-265 said the available chips had not been programmed correctly. “Phoenix stepped in and immediately got to work,” the official said. Within a month, NAVAIR received newly programmed devices and their supporting documentation. The turnaround compressed several engineering steps into a tight window. Phoenix characterized the chips, established the programming approach, and verified the resulting devices before delivery. One month from testing The work matters because BALDCU sits directly within the aircraft’s pilot breathing system. Its job involves managing the air supply delivered through the oxygen mask. That makes the underlying electronics more than an ordinary maintenance component. A shortage of correctly programmed replacement chips can create a difficult sustainment problem even when physical parts remain in storage. Legacy military aircraft face this issue frequently. Platforms can stay operational for decades, while the commercial electronics industry moves through multiple generations of components. Older chips may eventually disappear from normal production. Documentation and programming knowledge can also become harder to obtain as original suppliers leave the market. Phoenix approached the F/A-18 problem as an engineering investigation. Instead of starting with a new component, its engineers worked to understand the hardware already available to NAVAIR. Turning inventory into replacements The result gave NAVAIR a path to test the recovered devices for service. Phoenix delivered the programmed chips along with documentation supporting the work. Brian Hoerl, Phoenix’s co-founder and chief growth officer, said the engineers faced a problem without a clear playbook. “Our engineers dove into a technically demanding problem,” Hoerl said. “They delivered for a system that keeps pilots safe in the cockpit.” The episode illustrates a less visible part of keeping older military aircraft flying. Sometimes the obstacle is not finding a replacement part. The part may already be sitting in inventory. The harder task can be figuring out how to make that part usable again. In the F/A-18 case, engineers spent less than a month turning that question into a working programming process for NAVAIR to evaluate. Get the latest in engineering, tech, space & science - delivered daily to your inbox.Aamir is a seasoned tech journalist with experience at Exhibit Magazine, Republic World, and PR Newswire. With a deep love for all things tech and science, he has spent years decoding the latest innovations and exploring how they shape industries, lifestyles, and the future of humanity.