Establishing reliability goals for naval major-caliber ammunition

The authors describe a decision process for establishing the threshold reliabilities for components of naval major-caliber ammunition. They present a measure of reliability performance, called ef*, which relates directly to the weapons system’s performance in a naval gunfire support environment. The authors use a simulation model to establish this relationship, a regression metamodel to estimate its parameters, and a simple decision process to specify component reliability thresholds which ensure that the ammunition is mission effective. They present this article as an example of the integration of discrete event dynamic system analysis within a decison process.