Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability

It is critically important that today’s modern weapon systems demonstrate good reliability, availability, and maintainability (RAM) characteristics. Poor system RAM has a profound impact on mission performance and effectiveness, survivability, operating and support costs, and the size of the logistics footprint. Thus, the ability to develop realistic and testable requirements; provisions for a sound design approach with built-in reliability; a robust test program that will uncover remaining design deficiencies and facilitate growth; and a sound executable reliability program plan that supports the aforementioned tenets of reliability is crucial in fielding reliable and maintainable systems.