Many situations arise in which aerospace structures are subjected to high frequency excitation, in the sense that the wavelength of the induced dynamic response is much shorter than the overall dimensions of the structure. The application of the conventional finite element method to this type of problem faces two difficulties: (i) the short wavelength of the structural deformation requires the use of many elements, which renders the method computationally expensive or even impracticable, and (ii) the response of the structure at high frequencies can be very sensitive to structural detail, and thus response predictions for an ‘ideal’ structure may differ significantly from the performance of the actual system. For a number of years research effort has been directed towards the development of alternative analysis methods for high frequency vibrations, and recent developments in this area are reviewed in the present paper. The methods considered are: (i) hierarchical versions of the finite element method, (ii) the dynamic stiffness method, (iii)periodic structure theory, (iv)statistical energy analysis and (v) wave intensity analysis.