A system engineering approach to surface combatant design issues

Abstract

The design of naval surface combatants presents a challenging system engineering problem. There are many important choices to be analyzed and made. Within the limitation of the available technologies, there are many design decisions to be made even if no new technologies are selected. The purpose of this paper is to explore ship design optimization in a system engineering context. The design issues to be considered are ship speed, combined with powerplant size selection, endurance, and level of passive survivability. These issues are addressed from a design viewpoint using current technologies. It will be left to future efforts to explore the merits of new technologies. Military effectiveness and affordability analyses are used to determine the best selection of design parameters for future combatants. The analysis procedures used, together with the results, are summarized for reference and use.