A methodology for weapon system availability assessment, incorporating failure, damage and regeneration

Availability is a determining factor in systems characterization. Because military systems must act in a hostile environment, they are particularly vulnerable in situations of unavailability. Military weapon systems can become unavailable due to system failures or damage to the system; in both cases, system regeneration is needed to restore availability. However, very few of the general dependability studies, or even the more specific availability studies take battlefield damage into account. This paper aims to define principles for weapon systems modeling that integrate both system failure and system damage, as well as the possibility of regeneration, into operational availability assessment. This modeling method uses a unified failure/damage approach based on state-space modeling.