THE MODULAR SUPPORT SHIP: - ONE LOW COST ANSWER TO MANY DIFFERENT NEEDS

摘要

Present mission scenarios, irrespective of whether military or humanitarian they are, often involve long range fleet operations, which can be carried out only if a continuous and substantial logistic support is ensured. Since in many occasions supply bases may be considerably far away from the theatre of operations, support ships become essential to ensure mission feasibility. The new international rules (like MARPOL amendments), which imply remarkable design constraints, and the variety of possible operational profiles, which means the need for flexible vessel configurations, have obliged shipbuilders to move to a more rational design approach, where modular concepts can be applied to ensure not only the fulfilment of basic requirements, but also the containment of both building and through-life maintenance costs. The paper will try to explain how the modular concept may allow one single standardized platform to be a low cost basis for several practical applications, from LHDs to LPDs, from logistic support and replenishment vessels to hospital ships and disaster relief. The recent design of a double hull fleet tanker shall be presented with the aim of providing an overview of the design process and the technical background, which allow fulfilment of different requirements starting from a low cost basic platform. The use of merchant standards and COTS solutions, as far as practicable in relation to present and future regulatory regimes, will be suitably emphasized as the reduction in global costs is not only a need for shipbuilders, but also for navies, which can hardly afford to spend money as in previous decades. Such an approach is permitted by the rejection of some peculiar military features, as the capability to sustain specific military threats, which is possible since such vessels usually operate quite far from war zones.