Summary: The preventive-maintenance (PM) programme is a very important document in the life cycle of a piece of equipment or system. The traditional method used within China to determine PM programmes has many disadvantages, and some tasks in old programmes have proved to be unnecessary. Through analysing a complex military system (X system) by means of the reliability-centred maintenance (RCM) analysis, it is found that RCM analysis is more successful than the traditional method in deciding the PM programme. The new PM programme does not include unnecessary PM tasks included in the old programme. Thus the performance of the X system is enhanced, because the cost is reduced without compromising availability. It is believed that RCM analysis in military industry will make a valuable contribution to the maintenance of weapon systems and equipment.