When the U.S. Navy first began experimenting with angled flight decks on aircraft carriers in the 1950s, many old-school aviators were skeptical. The straight-deck carrier had already won a world war. Why reinvent it? But the engineers and pilots working the problem understood something important: the new generation of faster jet aircraft had fundamentally changed the operating environment. Landing speeds were higher. Margins for error were smaller. The old solution still worked—right up until it didn’t.
I’ve always thought the interconnect industry works much the same way. Our business is full of “good enough” solutions. Standard connector families, established specifications, and proven legacy designs. Now of course there is nothing wrong with established standards. In fact, many of Glenair’s most successful products began life as industry-standard interconnect platforms.
But over the years, we have developed a habit of asking a key question: what if the standard solution could do more? What if a MIL-DTL-38999 connector could deliver dramatically improved EMI shielding, higher density, faster assembly, better environmental performance, or reduced weight? What if power distribution hardware could survive current and temparature limits previously considered impractical? What if cable technologies could combine flexibility, survivability, and power handling in ways the industry had not yet considered?
This mindset gave rise to many of what we now call Glenair Signature Solutions. Products such as TurboFlex® power cables and PowerPlay® power distribution connectors, developed because our customers faced application challenges that conventional power interconnects simply could not resolve. In those cases, we were not just improving an existing lane in the road—we were paving an entirely new one.
At Glenair, that point of view has always been rooted in the belief that interconnect systems should not merely survive harsh environments—they should actively improve mission performance. They should save weight, simplify installation, increase reliability, accelerate maintenance, improve signal integrity, and solve operational issues before those problems ever reach the field.
As you read through this issue of QwikConnect, you’ll encounter numerous examples of innovative power products that reflect years of accumulated engineering insight, manufacturing expertise, and application experience. Some are refinements of proven military standards, but most represent entirely new approaches to interconnect design for harsh-environment power distribution. All of them reflect this underlying philosophy: never assume the current solution is destined to be the best solution forever. This kind of thinking is what contributes to the “signature difference” of Glenair.
This article appears in our July edition of QwikConnect. If you would like to subscribe, please click here.
**By clicking the link you are consenting to glenair.com storing the submitted information.**