The remaining serviceable life of a critical rotating component of a gas turbine engine can be predicted using a remote detection component. The remote detection component is inspected to determine whether a crack has formed at a dedicated crack-initiation feature. If a crack has formed, a known correlation between the remote detection component and the critical rotating component is used to estimate the remaining serviceable life of the critical rotating component. Because the detection component is remote from the critical component, there is no risk of failure of the critical component.