Often, you must demonstrate long-term product or component reliability within a relatively short time window. For example, it is not uncommon to need to assess 10-year reliability from a six-month duration test program. In such situations, basing life data analyses on appropriately selected degradation data (that is, monitoring change of one or more relevant quality or performance characteristics) when coupled with test acceleration can be highly useful. This column will consider the frequently encountered case in which the degradation measurement is destructive and, consequently, only a single degradation measurement can be obtained on each test unit. In such cases, the reliability assessment may be based on an accelerated destructive degradation test (ADDT). The authors explain ADDTs using an example dealing with a seal to be used in a new product. The results are clearly comforting to the investigators because they demonstrated statistically the desired level of reliability.