Influence of Space Weather on Single Event Effects in Aviation When Employing Modern Commercial Sub‐100 nm Electronic Devices

Abstract During November 2025 thousands of commercial aircraft (Airbus A320s) had to be grounded due to the risk of ionizing radiation effects on the avionics system. Safety‐critical systems continue to use modern commercial devices, and therefore an understanding of their responses within enhanced radiation environments is crucial to ensure reliable operations. Complex Single Event Effect (SEE) behaviors are often overlooked during Single Event Upset (SEU) testing but they can impact both the magnitude of the upset rate and increase the supply currents (from possible micro‐latches). This paper presents SEU Cross‐Sections for several modern Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) types and summarizes complex upset behaviors that were repeatedly observed in one SRAM type. The expected SEU rates, and other SEE metrics, for two SRAM types during extreme radiation events are compared with older SRAM technologies with larger feature sizes. Global upset rates are presented for one SRAM type indicating a very high upset rate over polar regions at altitudes where future supersonic aircraft are expected to operate at. Exemplars of how the micro‐latches may effect the long term reliability, by considering the thermal impact, are presented for two possible transport applications.