Keywords: elements made of polymer composite materials, fatigue life, residual strength Based on an analysis and the development of some known models of decline in the residual strength of composite materials with accumulation of fatigue damage in them, the main propositions of a modified model of degradation of the normalized strength, put forward to achieve an acceptable accuracy of calculated estimates of the residual fatigue life and residual strength of the composite elements of airframes subjected to multistep fatigue loadings, are formulated.