Reliability growth evaluates these recent changes and more generally assesses how current dod principles and practices could be modified to increase the likelihood that defense systems will satisfy their reliability requirements this report examines changes to the reliability requirements for proposed systems defines modern design and testing for reliability discusses the contractors role in reliability testing and summarizes the current state of formal reliability growth modeling . Panel on reliability growth methods for defense systems arthur fries chair institute for defense analyses alexandria va w peter cherry science applications international corporation retired ann arbor mi robert g easterling statistical consultant cedar crest nm elsayed a elsayed department of industrial and systems engineering rutgers university. Growth in reliability is defined as improvement in a products criteria input parameters during operating using the changes in the design or production process this paper presents a model for. Reliability growth enhancing defense system reliability mike cohen committee on national statistics ndia conference march 3 2015 1 thanks to our sponsors o thanks for inviting me for the first dissemination of this report this is an ideal group to discuss the panels recommendations o both the chair and the other local panel member wanted to be here but were unable to o thanks