In 2012/13 Babcock and Frazer Nash developed and reported on the Hydra SSK concept family in part to explore the practical application of modularity in naval submarines as a means of increasing adaptability and so assisting the sustainability of a medium size submarine enterprise. This exercise exposed that the whilst the several types of modularity identified could be of real value to the development of submarines and the operation of their parent enterprises, a wider appreciation of Adaptability in the submarine base design and enterprise (realised by making these amenable to change) was the more valuable characteristic overall. Adaptability would be used to obtain a coherent and enduring solution exploiting resilience against unresolved and changing requirements and conditions. The work reported in this paper exposes the range of intrinsic and more explicit features and measures that can contribute to the creation of an adaptable design. Indeed adaptability appears to have been a characteristic of many designs that are regarded as having been successful. Most of these features and measures are well known and the real message is that coherent introduction of these intrinsic and specific adaptability features (which may include systems and equipment that conveys flexibility) can enable the rolling adjustments necessary to maintain the operational effectiveness of a base design. The skill here is in the balancing of the scale of inclusion and combination of these measures as there are associated premiums. Such perceptive action demands a strong and self-aware submarine enterprise that is able to identify, comprehend and develop/procure the necessary elements in good time for introduction into the rolling cycle of design and platform update. Some specific observations may also be made - that minimum capability (minimum size) solutions and those that adopt potentially restrictive features are rather less likely to prove adaptable in practice (these limitations will also move them away from general 'good design' balances). Finally, the contributors of such goodness, adaptability and balance can only really be identified, explored and introduced in early stage design (Pre-concept and Concept).
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