Current accepted wisdom suggests that warships are more expensive to design, build and maintain than ships built for commercial trade, due to the need to meet more exacting naval standards and requirements resulting in a particular difficulty in the case of military support ships. The operators of these vessels may require a capability to support frontline warships and therefore expect a military support ship to meet naval standards, while the purchaser may expect a price appropriate to an equivalent commercial ship. Using the example of the AEGIR family of naval replenishment tankers, the paper describes the effect on cost of endeavouring to meet naval requirements representative of those expected by navies with global presence. The authors' approach is to meet the capability requirement through intelligent application of commercial standards and practices. Contrary to what might be expected, the results show that it is possible to achieve a satisfactory compromise between cost and naval requirements.
展开▼
