Missile health monitoring The Missile That Knows Its Own Age: From Calendar-Based Maintenance to Condition Monitoring

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A guided missile may spend twenty years in storage and only a few seconds in flight. During those years, however, its propellant, interfaces, batteries, electronics and mechanical components continue to age. Modern health-monitoring concepts promise to replace part of today’s calendar-based maintenance with actual condition data. MICA NG already points in this direction, while recent research into embedded sensors for solid rocket motors shows how deeply condition monitoring may eventually reach into the weapon itself.

For most of its service life, a missile does nothing. It waits in a depot, moves through logistics chains, spends time aboard an aircraft or ship, returns to storage and may repeat this cycle for years. But physically and chemically, the weapon is far from inactive.