The Need for a Software Safety Assessment In Weapons and Munitions Systems (OR: How to Byte Off More Than You Can Test)

Abstract

Weapon systems and their components often contain safety or arming features which are activated under software control; the control may be exercised through programmable timers, an electrically erasable programmable read only memory (EEPROM) or a microprocessor. However, software is just one part of a system and the assessment of software safety only becomes relevant in the system context: if the system moves into a hazardous state due to a software problem, then the software which caused that state is unsafe. This paper describes an approach to the assessment of the extent to which the software may be trusted. The approach includes traditional tools such as Hazard Analysis and Fault Tree Analysis together with Validation and Verification and other techniques for assessing code and indicates developments in Australia addressing these and related issues.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1996
Accession Number
ADA513838

Entities

People

  • Arthur Ringer

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accidents
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • Fault Tree Analysis
  • Munitions
  • Personnel Management
  • Reliability
  • Risk
  • Safety
  • Safety Analysis
  • Software Development
  • Software Testing
  • Validation
  • Verification
  • Weapon Systems
  • Weapons

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Aviation Safety Risk Assessment.
  • Computer Science/Computer Engineering/Data Science/Digital Signal Processing.
  • Cybersecurity.