The Bus TOO TOUGH to Die

The venerable MIL-STD-1553B bus has survived remarkably well even as other more advanced solutions gained wide acceptance in the last few years. However, the fact remains that its maximum data rate of 1 Mb/s is orders of magnitude too slow for today's data-intensive systems, so logic dictates that it will soon fade away. That may be a logical assumption, but it's likely to prove wrong, for several reasons.

The most obvious is that MIL-STD-1553B continues to fly on at least 30,000 aircraft, as well as on commercial and military ships, and is widely used in industrial and other applications. The situation is analogous to the International Space Station (where it's also present). The ISS was expected to “last” until 2015 but when it arrived, ISS lifetime projections were extended to 2020 and then to 2024, and the latest consensus is 2028.