Realizing Flexible Ships: Lessons from Allies to Improve the U.S. Shipbuilding Affordability, Capacity, and Schedule

摘要

Flexible and adaptive ship designs that are properly built and configured in a modular fashion save production and maintenance costs and provide rapid upgrade capability. U.S.-allied navies have adopted a modular approach to accommodate mission payloads for many currently deployed ships and future ships in development. The purpose of this paper is to present innovative concepts and practical lessons from South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan that could assist the U.S. Navy in quickly recognizing the benefits of introducing Flexible Warship design features and modular payloads into new and existing ships. These flexible features or enablers will achieve improved affordability, extend service life, increase deployment time, and expand mission capability. Our Pacific allies' ship building programs have been summarized from a global view:Top Shipbuilding Tonnage ProducersUS Allies with Rapid Shipbuilding CapacityDestroyers in Korea and Japan using Modular Weapons Features for ProductionTaiwan Navy's 16 warship programs plus its Coast Guard's 169-cutter acquisitions in 2018Three Taiwan Modular Warship examples: DDG(X), FFG-Cutter, and Corvette-CutterLarger Hull Margins Improve Ship Acquisition Affordability, Schedule, and CapabilityFlexible ships need Flexible Modular Combat SystemsTraditionally, when U.S. surface ships are designed to the lowest weight and highest equipment density with little upgrade margin, they are often considered an "optimized" procurement choice. This weight-based cost model often results in expensive ships with short service lives, long deployment delays, and lack of upgradability. By building less dense ships and using modular weapons payloads, Pacific allies have chosen these characteristics for both their new ships and their purchases of older soon-to-be-decommissioned ships to significantly increase their service life after upgrades.These three Pacific allies' approaches for evaluating flexible ship design features and building affordable ships can supplement traditional U.S. surface ship development. It is important for the U.S. Navy to plan, design, build, and operate flexible warships with an understanding of both the upfront cost of installing flexible architecture and the cost savings these features enable throughout the ship's life cycle.