In 1995, DoD made the decision to retire the Air Force F-111 and to transfer all tactical air electronic warfare responsibilities to the Navy EA-6B. This required a 20-year service life extension to that aircraft and upgrade of the EW electronics suite on all aircraft to the most recent, (block 89A) configuration. The all-digital Universal Encoder Upgrade (UEU) and the Computer Interface Unit and Encoder (CIU/E) are required on all 540 aircraft. The UEU had been developed but never produced and the CIU/E had been out of production for over 10 years.

Obsolete parts needed to be replaced. The reliability and electrical performance of the new parts was to be evaluated before committing to the new design.

Production of both was re-established using current electronic packaging technology in a period of less than 2 years to first unit delivery, which fully met Navy schedule requirements. The re-engineered units are in production at a unit price that will provide over $20M cost reduction relative to the price of the original units. The cost savings are due to the introduction of state-of-the-market, automated manufacturing and inspection and use of current electronic component replacements for obsolete parts packaged in the most recent (e.g. ball grid array format) configurations. The Return on Investment (ROI) was 3:1. The EMPF developed technology transfer and deployment materials, which provided procedure, manufacturing rules, cost saving guidelines, and process selection criteria for the restart of a production line.