The performance of a class of distributed control systems is analyzed when the interconnected fault tolerant components switch their mode of operation according to independent, identically distributed processes. New expressions for performance metrics are presented for this case, including their sensitivity analysis. These metrics require non-trivial derivations that are not just simplified expressions of the known metrics for the homogeneous Markov case. For a class of distributed control systems, the performance metrics are also computed when the actuators are assumed to have or not have memory. Finally, the results are illustrated with a distributed flight control example. © 2010 AACC.