Dynamic Failure Control for Military Electronics

Failures in electronic equipment can cost time, effort, supplies, money and even lives. Most reliability programs concentrate almost exclusively upon failure prevention; their main interest seems to be in developing failure resistant components and equipment. However, to assume that such an approach can eliminate all possibility of failure is unrealistic. It is much more practical to view the tendency to failure as ever-present and to place more emphasis upon control of failures and their effects (a concept including but not limited to prevention). There is, a close analogy between the nondnamic approach to reliability and the ``Maginot Line'' type of military strategy, and between the dynamic failure control approach advocated here and the modern ``Atomic War'' type of strategy. The notorious ``game'' of Russian Roulette is used as an example, purposely far removed from electronics, of the dynamic approach to failure control and of the importance to dynamic failure control of thorough systems analysis.