T-AKE: Acquiring the Environmentally Sound Ship of the 21st Century

摘要

Department of Defense (DoD) program managers are increasingly challenged with the difficulties of balancing the risks associated with cost, schedule, and performance in an era of intense competition for increasingly scarce resources. Requirements associated with environmental, safety, and health (ESH), in the context of thirty to forty-year service lives, have not been consistently, or in some cases adequately, addressed in DoD programs. Environmental protection (EP) requirements generally do not fit the normal requirements generation and product synthesis model typically applied to weapon system development. As with all requirements, early identification is the key to integration into the total system. Recognition that EP requirements must be integrated at program conception led to development of the ESH Integration Model by the U.S. Navy Lewis and Clark (T-AKE) Auxiliary Cargo Ammunition Ship Program. Institutionalization of this model has enabled the T-AKE Program to establish EP performance requirements for the twelve-ship class that substantially reduce the environmental footprint of the Navy. Compared to the fifteen ships that it will be replacing, T-AKE will require fifty percent less manning and reduce waste streams by seventy percent enabling an annual life cycle cost savings of $5M in ashore waste disposal costs. The T-AKE Program has been the first to achieve the Chief of Naval Operations vision for the "Environmentally Sound Warship of the 21st Century" through design integration of EP requirements.