[colechristensen]

Defense contractors talk a whole lot about COTS (commercial off the shelf) these days (and in the past few decades). It's a big deal to be able to not spend money reengineering something equivalent to an existing technology. It would take _years_ to create a new data comms interface (like FireWire, USB 1,2,3, ThunderBolt, etc etc) and why? The signaling physical layer and cabling design don't need to be redone do they?

They'll surely have reengineered cables and connectors to survive the aircraft environment, but who wouldn't rather buy a FireWire PHY from Mouser than design and manufacture something similar from the ground up?

Decisions like this will have happened at Lockheed and high up / early in the design phase. (i.e. it's not some subcontractor finding efficiencies but a fundamental block of the system design)