Effects of environment and aging upon missile reliability

Abstract

Storage test data collected over 15 years of the United States Navy Harpoon anti-ship missile program provides experiential data to compare to theoretical models. The Harpoon missile shows an increasing storage MTBF with an increasing missile population age. Electronic subassemblies show storage MTBF growth with time. Mechanical subassemblies have higher storage MTBFs, but show little or no growth. Air-launched, ship-launched, and submarine-launched variants of the Harpoon missile are exposed to different environments which causes variations in the resulting storage reliabilities. The effects upon storage reliability apparently are not related to temperature and humidity so much as they are related to vibration and physical shock.