The military display market is analyzed in terms of all fully electronic and many electro-mechanical displays used on combat platforms across all DoD Services. The military market for displays is defined by parameters such as active area, bezel-to-bezel measurement and technology. Other characteristics such as luminance, contrast ratio, gray levels, resolution, viewing angle, color, video capability, and night vision imaging system compatibility are noted. This study takes into account all displays that are either installed or funded for installation. In some few cases, it also includes planned displays. Display sizes having aggregate defense applications of 5,000 units or greater and having DoD applications across 10 or more platform fleets, are tabulated. The issue of size commonality is addressed where distribution of active area across platform fleets, individually, in groups of two through nine, and ten or more, is illustrated. Military displays are also analyzed by technology, where total quantities of such displays are broken out into CRT, LCD, AMLCD, EM, LED, Incandescent, Plasma and TFEL percentages. Custom, versus Ruggedized Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (RCOTS), versus Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) designs are contrasted. High and low information content designs are identified. Displays for several high-profile military programs are discussed, to include both technical specifications and program history. Our defense-wide study as of February 2006 has documented 1,195 direct-view and 15 virtualview display sizes across 628 weapon system platforms for a total of 1,161,977 displays.

Date Published: 5 May 2006
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 6225, Defense, Security, Cockpit, and Future Displays II, 622504 (5 May 2006); doi: 10.1117/12.663675

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6225:
Defense, Security, Cockpit, and Future Displays II
Eric W. Forsythe; James C. Byrd; Henry J. Girolamo; Daniel D. Desjardins, Editor(s)