Reliability Program Development and Implementation for a Remote Piloted Vehicle

This paper decribes the implementation of a Reliability Program from the definition of a major project throughout development, to operational flights. The Reliability Program enjoyed full support by IAI Engineering Division management without any outside (client) pressure and enabled the reliability group to prove its competence and usefulness to all levels of design engineers and prototype shop engineers and management. A life cycle cost analysis was used at the start of the program to determine reliability goals; systematic design reviews were conducted during the program; environmental testing was applied to all components and systems belonging to both the aircraft and the ground station; all failures were analysed and improvements were made whenever needed; prototype quality assurance was reorganized. All these were done while taking into account that the remote piloted aircraft was not manrated and had to fit quite tight cost levels. Reliability group was monitored during flight test and operational flight and significant improvements were achieved during these phases. In short, a text-book reliability program was successfully applied. The RPV is a most successful program from all points of view: proven operational capability, survivability and mission reliability. This project demonstrated that preliminary reliability evaluations can be achieved when there is a close partnership among project management, design engineering and reliability & maintainability engineering - and most important - full management support. The advantage of having a reliability and maintainability group completely dedicated to the project was proven.