As a U.S. based manufacturer, Advanced Conversion Technology (ACT) brings a vertically integrated approach to military power solutions, combining in-house engineering, manufacturing and testing capabilities. This enables ACT to develop and validate solutions with a clear understanding of current defense systems while remaining aligned with emerging trends in defense power systems.
Emerging Trends
Today, advanced electronics, AI and autonomous systems are driving increased power demands. At the same time, the electrification of land, sea and air military vehicles, as well as bases, requires higher power density, greater load capability, smaller form factors, reduced weight and tougher mission profiles.
Wide-bandgap (WBG) devices are enabling ACT to engineer solutions that address the need for higher efficiency, more power and smaller form factors. At ACT, we’re seeing a need for modular and scalable power architectures to meet the needs of advanced high-power applications. We’re also seeing a demand for quick-turn military commercial-off-the-shelf (MIL-COTS) power supplies. Our proprietary MIL-COTS solutions are developed to have a quick turnaround time when purchased as-is or modified to meet application requirements.
Key Challenges
Designing and manufacturing for reliability in the field is no small task. Meeting all of the MIL-STDs while simultaneously making a product that is power-dense and efficient is a challenge. For example, WBG devices are excellent and open the door to an enormous number of possibilities—form factors, topologies and power levels—but they come with a design trade-off of a larger EMI footprint.
Common challenges facing the industry are supply chain volatility, balancing customization with manufacturability and ensuring product reliability in harsh environments. Manufacturing defense electronics also encounters low volumes and long product lifespans. This can make part obsolescence another major challenge, specifically for specialty components. If significant enough, this type of change could lead to a potential requalification, also known as a Delta Design Verification Test (DVT).
Regardless of the hurdle, our mission at ACT guides us: to design, build and support power solutions that perform and protect. “Power supply manufacturing is not just meeting a specification,” says Noah Martin, Engineering Supervisor at ACT. “It is guaranteeing that under the most extreme conditions, our products are built with the highest quality, performance and reliability, so when the people defending our freedom rely on them most, we help bring them home safely to their loved ones.”
Future Opportunities
At ACT, we see significant opportunity in the electrification of the defense sector and the high-power-density solutions required for future platforms. Building on advances accelerated by the commercial market, technologies such as bidirectional power conversion can enable greater flexibility by allowing power sources and loads to deliver energy and absorb it, reducing the need for multiple converters within a payload. This flexibility could also support new battlefield strategies, enable greater separation between personnel and power sources and provide more efficient high-voltage DC methods for delivering and converting power in remote locations.
We see particularly strong potential in ground-mobile applications, including high-voltage systems for Army ground vehicles and applications aligned with MIL-STD-3072. ACT has a proprietary oil-gas mixture for high-voltage applications, along with digital control strategies and new power-conversion topologies that enable more efficient high-voltage step-up and step-down conversion.
While WBG technologies present challenges, their advantages—including increased efficiency, higher voltage breakdown, faster switching frequencies and improved power-device figures of merit enable advanced converter topologies, including active-front ends, bidirectional and multilevel converters, while achieving a power-dense and efficient solution. At ACT, we continue to innovate and incorporate WBG technologies into our newer designs to help advance the next generation of defense power systems.
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Power supply manufacturing is not just meeting a specification. It is guaranteed that under the most extreme conditions, our products are built with the highest quality, performance and reliability.
ACT, Your Partner in Power
Designing for manufacturability and incorporating testing early in the development process are essential to delivering reliable products efficiently. At ACT, our vertically integrated approach brings engineering, manufacturing and quality together under one roof, enabling rapid prototyping, early design modifications, streamlined production and faster time to market. This close collaboration minimizes downtime between development stages, helps prevent costly redesigns and allows us to respond quickly as project requirements evolve.
As the defense industry places greater emphasis on domestic manufacturing and supply chain resilience, ACT provides responsive, collaborative support throughout the project lifecycle—from initial design and development through production, sustainment and obsolescence management. Our integrated teams work together to meet demanding schedules, maximize throughput and deliver power supplies built to the quality standards required by our customers.
Quality remains central to everything we do, providing customers with confidence in both performance and reliability. For organizations seeking a collaborative engineering partner with the manufacturing capabilities to move from concept to production, contact ACT.
