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Statement of the Problem: Since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 the U.S. Airlines have experienced many changes involved with the competitive free market system. For one they have been forced to change their thinking which now lets the balance sheets and bottom line dictate their routes, schedules and pricing. Another is they are forced to operate at lower budgets looking at ways of attracting customers while reducing costs. Both these changes have resulted in the airlines operating close to bankruptcy. With this in mind we see many of the Airlines operating an older fleet of aircraft and not replacing them with newer aircraft. The same is true for the Department of Defense who's mainstay bomber and transport fleet is on average 20 plus years old. So what can the DOD and the airlines do together under the auspices of Dual Use so as to reduce costs and improve their operations?

Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) require switches that are capable of switching hundreds to thousands of amperes of current at thousands of volts potential. Present and near term available devices must be packaged in parallel and in series to achieve the power ratings required for DEW applications. High voltage silicon (Si) devices such as recent advances in MOS turn-off thyristors (MTOs) can be used along with the high speed, soft-recovery Trench Oxide P-i-N Schottky (TOPS) diodes to reach high power density and high efficiency. However, wide bandgap, high thermal conductivity silicon carbide (SiC) power switches and diodes in development offer orders of magnitude improvement in terms of power density and power efficiency, and are much more ideal for DEW applications. In addition, SiC power switches can be operated at much higher temperatures than silicon (present developments to at least 300°C) with an increased Radiation Hardness.