BAE Systems received $16 million on September 16, 2026, through U.S. Defense Production Act Title III funding from the Department of War’s Warfighting Investments, Resourcing, and Execution directorate to demonstrate and qualify its RH45 radiation-hardened 45 nanometer technology for space missions. The company will reestablish its RH45 ASIC Storefront, with production tied to GlobalFoundries’ 45 nm silicon-on-insulator process in Malta, New York.
The technical significance is high: RH45 is a qualified building-block platform for custom ASICs designed to operate in extreme orbital radiation environments, which matters for lunar assets exposed to solar particle events and long-duration cumulative radiation. A lower-risk domestic rad-hard chip supply chain improves resilience for communications, navigation, robotics, storage, and safety-critical control hardware, all of which are essential to lunar habitation and civilization restoration.
Ark action: track RH45 qualification milestones, manufacturing yield, radiation-test results, and whether the platform expands into single-board computers such as BAE’s Endura. If validated, evaluate RH45-class components for Ark systems that must survive decades of radiation exposure, especially command processors, sensor fusion units, data archives, and autonomous maintenance controllers.