The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is replacing the majority of its naval auxiliary ships. The immediate requirement is to procure up to six Fleet Tankers that are compliant with IMO double-hull requirements. The Fleet Tanker requirements are fundamentally commercial in nature, but with several additional specific military features. Achieving a balance between commercial and naval requirements is a current challenge for the MoD, and understanding the associated costs is essential in that trade-off. To this end, a systems engineering approach was taken to establish a series of designs corresponding to different requirements and to estimate the costs of the changes. By widening competition to commercial shipyards, and keeping specifications essentially "commercial" in nature, the UK hopes to procure tankers at a "commercial" price.
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