Reliability and Cost of Avionics

This paper is an outgrowth of an investigation to determine how avionic equipment reliability might be improved articularly in view of the experience gained on the ``Minuteman'' high reliability program. The latter program showed that missile electronics reliability could be improved over commercial equipments of similar complexity by several orders of magnitude by emphasis on highly reliable components. No attempt was made to resort to redundancy to obtain reliability with existing components. The basic premise in emphasizing best possible components was that over a period of time, proachhis approach was the only one that was economically feasible. The high cost of unreliability cannot be overstressed, and particularly in view of current cost trends, suggests that this philosophy also makes sense in commercial avionics.