AMRAAM BIT: operational benefits and penalties

The Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM or AIM-120) currently in the Full-Scale Engineering Development Phase will replace the Sparrow as the beyond visual range armament for the Air Force's F-15 and F-16 and for the Navy's P-14 and F/A-18 fighter aircraft. Because it is a major Joint Service program with multinational implications, AMRAAM's reliability and maintainability requirements have received considerable attention. The program office has attempted to treat them rigorously so that meaningful readiness goals and thresholds can be articulated to DoD management at all levels of authority. To this end, a considerable number of analytical tasks have been performed on the affects of Built-in-Test on AMRAAM's operational performance over the defined life cycle of the missile. These analyses have led to the development of quantitative requirements for MTBFs, BIT effectiveness, and BIT false alarm rate which can be readily defended and which will be measured during all phases of the test program. The findings in some areas have been quite unexpected.