In the 1980's Satellite Communications were being deployed in all the services. Satellite dishes need protection from the elements, natural and battlefield. One program required antennae that could survive not only extreme weather exposure but also nuclear blast waves at a specified distance. The engineers and scientists calculated that a protective radome of a specified wall thickness and variability be used to protect the dishes. The problem was that the process for making the radomes had more variability in wall thickness than allowed by specification. Rejected radomes were piling up at the supplier.
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