In 1990, with the Soviet Union in
its death throes, it seemed high time to begin stowing away some of the tens of
thousands of tons of electronics the United States military had accumulated to
fight the Cold War. At least, that was the line of thinking in the first half
of the year. Then, that August, Iraqi forces rolled into Kuwait, and our line
of thinking had to change yet again in preparation for the First Gulf War.
As American forces began their rapid
build-up to Desert Storm, a major issue came to light. The electronic equipment
onboard tanks, Humvees, and mobile artillery, much of which had been corralled
in storage sheds throughout the United States and West Germany, began to
malfunction in the rugged desert environment. Due galvanic incompatibility,
caused in many cases by inadequate EMI shielding gaskets and gasket design, the
electronic enclosures on many of these items simply couldn’t withstand the environment
they were subjected to, and began in many cases, just falling apart.
In short, the American military
discovered what thousands of grade school science students have discovered when
building their first primitive wet cell batteries: galvanic
action can cause the fast sacrifice of enclosures, especially aluminum and
magnesium, in tough environments. The need became apparent to develop moldings,
extrusions, and EMI/RFI shielding gaskets that would allow for the American
military’s high-performance, high-maintenance electronic equipment to perform
at optimal level for long periods of time.
Since those days of 1991, we’ve
come a long way in terms of our design-work for military electronics and, by
extension, ruggedized commercial
applications. At Vanguard Products we’ve
fabricated any number of custom moldings, rubber extrusions, and shielding
gaskets for some of the most sophisticated vehicles and weapons systems in
America’s arsenal. Just ask the soldiers and marines who fought in the Second
Gulf War. While it’s a given that mil-spec equipment is prone to breakage and
failure in wartime (just as in peacetime), the anticipated epidemic of
mechanical and electronic failures similar to the First Gulf War never
materialized for the Second, at least not on the same scale. It’s because we as
a country had learned our lessons from 1991. It’s because companies like
Vanguard Products had applied those lessons with consideration and care to the
equipment they had designed.
