How to Calculate the True Permissible Leak Rate and How to Raise it by Four Orders of Magnitude

This paper is in two parts. The first part presents bad news and the second part good news. The bad news is that the maximum permissible leak rates specified in the military standards are too large by at least three orders of magnitude, and that for microelectronic packages the true values are too small to measure. The good news is that the true permissible leak rate can be raised by four orders of magnitude or more by the inclusion in the package of a means to capture water as it enters through small leaks. Three different means are presented.