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Affordability and reliability are equally important as the performance and development time for many optical systems for military, space and commercial applications. These characteristics are even more important for the systems meant for space and military applications where total lifecycle costs must be affordable. Most customers are looking for high performance optical systems that are not only affordable but are designed with “no doubt” mission assurance, reliability and maintainability in mind. Both US military and commercial customers are now demanding an optimum balance between performance, reliability and affordability. Therefore, it is important to employ a disciplined systems design approach for meeting the performance, cost and schedule targets while keeping affordability and reliability in mind. The US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) now requires all of their systems to be engineered, tested and produced according to the Mission Assurance Provisions (MAP). These provisions or requirements are meant to ensure complex and expensive military systems are designed, integrated, tested and produced with the reliability and total lifecycle costs in mind. This paper describes a system design approach based on the MAP document for developing sophisticated optical systems that are not only cost-effective but also deliver superior and reliable performance during their intended missions.
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