Textbook Cover

The Fundamentals of Aircraft Combat Survivability Analysis and Design

REVISED 2nd EDITION
Robert E. Ball, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Naval Postgraduate School

In 1985, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) published The Fundamentals of Aircraft Combat Survivability Analysis and Design as the fourth book in its new Educational Series.  The world’s first textbook on aircraft survivability was authored by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Professor Robert E. Ball and funded by the JTCG/AS (now JASPO).  The 400-page first edition became a perennial bestseller, with approximately 10,000 copies sold over the following 18 years.

In 2007, Dr. Ball won the AIAA Summerfield Book Award for the publication of the second edition of the book.  The second edition greatly expanded on, and updated, the text’s content and made it more useful for students.  Chapters included an introduction to the survivability discipline, as well as discussions on aircraft anatomy; missions, threats, and threat effects; and susceptibility, vulnerability, and survivability metrics and analyses.  Also included were appendices on survivability features of World War II aircraft, as well as on probability theory and applications to survivability assessment.

AIAA logo
Scroll to Top