Noah Martin, Engineering SupervisorAs 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.
Power Supply Decisions for Defense Programs
A power supply selected for a defense platform rarely fails as a line item. It fails as a schedule risk, a qualification delay, retrofit cost or a field-support problem that reaches far beyond the electrical cabinet. Defense buyers are not simply comparing wattage or input range. They are judging whether a manufacturer can carry a design from early electrical requirements through documentation and repeatable production under environmental-test pressure without forcing the program team to manage every gap.
The hardest buying pressure sits between speed and evidence. Contracting timelines rarely wait for perfect electrical maturity. Program teams often need a unit fast enough for demonstration or replacement work, but the part still has to survive the same scrutiny as equipment designed for long deployment cycles. That tension makes off-the-shelf availability useful only when it is backed by testing discipline and a credible path to modification. A catalog item that cannot be adjusted for voltage, cooling, mounting constraints or military standards may shorten procurement at the start and lengthen qualification later.
“Military housing continues to offer distinct advantages through stable occupancy rates, predictable cash flows from bah payments, and relative insulation from broader real estate market cycles.”
Manufacturing control matters for the same reason. Military power electronics carry too many handoffs for a loosely connected supply chain to remain invisible. Engineering decisions affect magnetics, thermal behavior, component selection and test results. Buyers should look closely at how much of that work stays inside one facility, how quickly design changes move between teams and whether production feedback reaches engineering before a problem becomes a program issue. The advantage is not just faster delivery. It is fewer blind spots when requirements change.
Testing depth is another separator. A supplier should be able to show how design verification reaches the electrical and temperature boundaries the application demands. MIL-STD alignment has to be more than a reference in a datasheet; it should connect to how the unit will be used on mobile platforms and shipboard or airborne power environments. For custom work, buyers should ask how non-operating conditions, load points, thermal boundaries and component stress are evaluated before the product enters the field. Confidence comes from documented limits, not broad ruggedness language.
Quality systems also deserve a practical reading. AS9100D and ISO 9001:2015 matter most when they shape daily engineering and manufacturing behavior rather than sit apart as audit evidence. Strong suppliers build quality into design reviews and process controls before final inspection. That distinction is critical in power electronics, where a late defect can trigger redesign work and retesting under delivery pressure.
Advanced Conversion Technology (ACT) aligns well with these priorities. Its military power supply portfolio includes AC-DC and DC-DC products, custom designs and MIL-COTS offerings that can be modified to meet application-specific requirements. The company designs, manufactures and tests its products in a single U.S. facility, allowing engineering, qualification and production teams to work in close coordination. Its approach combines field-proven design experience with modern power-conversion technologies while maintaining compliance with military standards relevant to land, maritime and aerospace applications. For defense organizations balancing qualification demands, deployment schedules and long-term reliability requirements, ACT presents a well-supported option grounded in manufacturing control, testing discipline and customer collaboration.
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