A discussion is provided of military use of commercial off the shelf (COTS) technology in such equipment as stratospheric blimps. Chips are being custom designed for solar-powered unmanned tactical airships floating high over battlefields. A cutting edge foundry found a path back into the military-aeronautics market after leaving it over ten years ago, but could now do things for far less money than in the old days. For instance, International Rectifier provides hi-reliability in its products with radiation hardening MOSFET devices. IR's radiation-hardened products go into satellites, launch vehicles, and weapons. For space exploration, IR works with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech on advanced platforms for a next-generation Martian space laboratory, and also has hi-rel devices in aircraft such as the F-22 and the Airbus A380. IR's iMotion design platform, which was first designed for efficient motor control in white goods, will be used in near space in the HAA (High Altitude Airship) from Lockheed Martin. Because it is not based on all-purpose digital signal processors (DSPs) and microprocessors, iMotion does not need coding. Rather, the system designer applies the iMotion development software and intellectual property (IP) library when configuring a field programmable gate array (FPGA) with on of the provided control algorithms. IR's iMotion IP library can be used for design of variable-speed, motion, control systems with or without encoders, and feedback control loop bandwidth is up to 5kHz.