Navies have always evolved but usually the process is gradual as the longevity of ships provides considerable inertia to the process, start of design of first of class to retirement of last of class can easily span 50 years. Occasionally there is a step change when a disruptive technology is introduced, HMS Warrior is an example, the Dreadnoughts and more recently aircraft carries are others. Even then these ships had to operate with other vessels of the existing fleet. This paper considers what would happen if the whole RN surface fleet were to be renewed at once with an in-service date of 2015. Practical considerations of construction capacity and financial issues are necessarily put to one side. Historical ties are swept away and the fleet can be built and operate in any way it likes without having to conform with the requirements of existing ships whose designs are dated. The analysis is based on the design requirements set for the MSc students at UCL in their ship design exercises for 2007 who between them designed a new surface fleet of 9 different vessels including RFA's, a corvette and a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. The paper will briefly describe the aircraft carrier and the impact on the designs of having a fleet wide policy that is temporally consistent and that does not have to accommodate any existing vessels or their operating practices. Surprisingly the apparent freedom of design is an illusion and there are so many external constrains that the resultant fleet is not that different from what we have to-day.
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