Military Cable Assemblies

When it comes to building cable assemblies for the military a much different set of standards must be applied. Because of the role of the military and the environment that most military equipment is designed to be used in the cables and wiring harnesses must be strong enough to stand up to extreme conditions without failing. In military use cable failure can result in loss of life or the destruction of equipment and facilities that are completely unacceptable. Like any other cable, military cable assemblies start out on the drawing boards as a new piece of equipment is being designed. These custom cables are often made for pieces of equipment that do not exist in the civilian world so each one of them has to be custom built to the equipment manufacturers specific needs. This takes time and a team of dedicated engineers who understand both what the product designer wants and what military specifications for the product are. Building military cable assemblies calls for being able to work on a fine line between functionality and the need for a hardened or heavily protected from outside damage cable. The difficulty is to be able to make a cable that while still flexible enough to be useable is strong enough to take the pounding it might have to undergo on the battle field. Because of the environment that most military cable assemblies are used in, they also require very special and unique connectors. In the civilian world a standard plug in connector is usually sufficient in most applications, however on the battlefield or in the air these types of connectors will not stay in place and can wreak havoc.

Military style connectors require the ability for them to be secured in place and then locked or safety wired so that there is no chance of them falling out at the wrong moment, jeopardizing someone's life or causing the loss of communications in the middle of a battle. Since most military equipment is designed to be used on the battlefield, all military cable assemblies are required to be shielded from radio frequency emissions of RF and many of them must also be shielded from the effects of electromagnetic pulses or EMP. EMP is the direct result of a nuclear detonation, but in recent years sophisticated equipment has been designed to produce EMP without a nuclear explosion, this pulse is capable of completely disrupting any form of unprotected electrical device. It takes a specialized facility to be able to manufacture cable assemblies to military specifications. They not only have to have the engineers on staff who are knowledgeable regarding these specifications, but the facility must also have the equipments and access to the required materials need to create the cable assemblies. At JEM Electronics you will find that their facilities are fully capable of meeting the needs of the military and provide a fast turnaround time on any project they are asked to complete. Their facilities also meet ISO 9001 and TS 16949 standards as well being fully UL/CSA certified.