This report reviews highlights and developments during the fourth trading quarter of 2024 and the trends that are driving technology development for VITA technology boards and systems.
Full Report
The change in Administration decided by U.S. elections in Q4 has initiated discussions on how expected policy changes may affect U.S. defense manufacturers in 2025 and beyond. Key issues are first, the commercial relationship with China and how proposed tariff increases will impact on supply chains and costs. Second, is the threat of significant federal government spending cuts and how these might impact on the U.S. defense budget and programs. Third is the relationship with NATO allies including threats to withdraw support for Ukraine and the pressure on allies to increase significantly defense budgets.
The latter is already stimulating the growth in European defense spending and the rebuilding of the European defense industry to achieve a more robust, and to some extent less U.S.-reliant, defense posture in the face of Russian aggression.
New European joint ventures have been announced in Q4 which evidence this trend and VITA members are well placed to take advantage of new project opportunities by offering the modular open architecture components to build advanced systems. This may require building stronger direct relationships with European defense companies who see the benefits of following the U.S. military’s preferred open systems approach.
Meanwhile Q3 results for VITA-standard suppliers who publish financial reports continue the strong growth trend achieved to date in 2024 with an average of 13.5% growth compared to the same period in 2023. Many new VPX, XMC and chassis products have been announced in the quarter as well as the announcement of significant contract wins, in particular, Kontron’s major 165m Euro contract win for VPX computing and communication computing units for mobile and stationary surveillance applications.
VITA’s own Embedded Tech Trends conference in San Antonio January 13-14 will provide participating sponsors to showcase news on new standards developments.
