Fighting the 1000 snakes [commercial-off-the-shelf in military environment]

This paper describes the many significant advantages of using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment in the military environment. Aside from reducing the design and development costs by capitalizing on the investment in technology made by the commercial industry, using COTS allows simpler and faster upgrading to insert additional operating capability, rapid procurement from the world market, and provides the potential to reduce support costs and the opportunity for common support across a range of capabilities. Moreover, training requirements can often be reduced thanks to prior user familiarity with many COTS products. However, there are a number of critical factors that must be taken into account in selecting the appropriate COTS products. In particular, environmental idiosyncrasies must be accounted for to ensure that the COTS design is fully compliant and suitable for military use, and will deliver the design capability when subjected to the operational military environment.