Development of reliability program standard GEIA-STD-0009

Until recently, Military Standard 785 [1] was the primary reliability program standard used by the US Department of Defense (DoD). MIL-STD-785 consisted of a menu of tasks that program managers could select from in order to construct a reliability program for a specific acquisition. Many systems subjected to operational field testing by the DoD failed to demonstrate their reliability requirements. MIL-STD-785 was cancelled in 1998 after two industry standards were developed as alternatives: IEEE 1332 [2] and SAE JA1000 [3]. The requirements set forth in both IEEE 1332 and SAE JA1000 are very concise and consist primarily of statements of three objectives. Many systems still fail to demonstrate their reliability requirements during operational field testing as depicted in Figure 1 [4].