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Track 1 Session 10
9:10 to 10:10 a.m. Friday June
22, 2007
Determining the Ballistic Missile Defense
Shield’s Effective Reliability
The Ballistic Missile Defense
System (BMDS) is a phased arrangement of equipment that is designed
to engage a limited number of ballistic missiles launched against
the United States and her allies. A phased system is one that
changes its characteristics or topology over time. Determining the
reliability of phased systems requires the rather complex
aggregation of results across phases. For any realistic equipment
architecture, simulation is the only technique with the capability
to resolve the reliability of a phased system. The mission
reliability parameter is often determined for a complex phased
system but effective reliability can often be a better measure of
system performance. The mission reliability parameter accounts for
the suitability aspects such as hardware and software failures
during a phased mission, while the effective reliability parameter
simultaneously accounts for both suitability and effectiveness
issues that are statistically dependent. Using realistic but
non-classified data, we will demonstrate that the BMDS community’s
current reliance on the mission reliability parameter will
overestimate the abilities of the system while the effective
reliability parameter will yield a better estimator of the system’s
true potential to negate ballistic missiles.
Key Words: Ballistic Missile
Defense, Effective Reliability, Mission Reliability, Phasing,
Reliability Block Diagrams, Simulation
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