Design-to-cost: the road to testability

Operation and Support (O&S) costs account for an ever increasing share of weapon systems budgets. Maintenance costs are a major driver in the 0 & S cost equation. As a result, testability, as a subset of maintainability, has become of increasing concern not only to the test community, but to the weapon system designer as well. While acceptance of the notion of testability poses no serious difficulty, the methodology of its delineation and measurement requires both definition and a means of implementation. While any number of parameters can serve to characterize elements of testability, any of these is utlimately translatable to cost. It is therefore suggested that the concept of testability be addressed within a Life Cycle Cost (LCC) structure, and reduced to practice by the application of Design To Cost (DTC) tech niques.