Fides (Latin: trust) is a guide allowing estimated reliability calculation for electronic components and systems.
Fides is a DGA (French armament industry supervision agency) study conducted by a European consortium formed by eight industrialists from the fields of aeronautics and Defence: The first aim of the Fides project was to develop a new reliability assessment method for electronic components which takes into consideration COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) and specific parts and the new technologies.
Moreover, the MIL HDBK 217F is very pessimistic for COTS components which are more and more widely used in military and aerospace systems.
The first is a reliability prediction calculation method concerning main electronic component families and complete subassemblies like hard disks or LCD displays.
For two years, the French military experts of DGA have already used FIDES method in different major programs for Defence, in missiles or tactical telecommunications fields for example.