Top-Down Analysis Approach for Threat Hazard Assessment on Insensitive Munition Programs

摘要

Threat hazard assessment is traditionally viewed as an inductive analysis technique which seeks to assess the effectsthreats within the life cycle impart on the weapon system. Under MIL-STD-2105 there are eleven tests that may beapplied to simulate these threats. Four of these tests represent environmental threats, and the other 7 involveabnormal, but potentially credible threats. For many projects involving insensitive munition development, theinductive approach made sense because of the potential for identifying a previously unknown threat. This bottom-upapproach, however, creates a large analysis documents with the expected result indicating which of the eleven testsapplied. With systems that have well established life cycles and threat environments, a top down approach may bemore appropriate. Using a functional fault tree model, the threats that would lead to a one of the eleven testscenarios can be assessed. This approach provides a more streamlined analysis of threats and may be used toeliminate unrealistic threats while providing a sound analysis framework for justifying the conclusion. The benefitof this approach is that the threat is more quickly characterized, the determination of whether a test is required canbe achieved more succinctly, and the end result is identical to the inductive approach. The analyst would still need tocharacterize the credible threats and tailor the eleven tests to align with the product?s life cycle environmental profileand the threats contained therein. However, this effort can be more focused to identify where the threat deviatesfrom the military standards and technical orders. Traditional analysis tools within fault tree analysis can be used tohelp identify the most significant threat scenarios such as importance analysis and cutset assessments.