SPECIAL REPORT 306:

NAVAL ENGINEERING IN THE 21ST CENTURY

THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FOUNDATION FOR FUTURE NAVAL FLEETS

The Future for Naval Engineering

Topics for the Research and Development Community

Paul E. Sullivan
VADM, USN (Retired)

Paper prepared for the

Committee on Naval Engineering in the 21st Century
Transportation Research Board

2011
 Naval Ship Design and Construction
Topics for the Research and Development Community

PAUL E. SULLIVAN
VADM, USN (Retired)

T he United States naval shipbuilding establishment has produced the best, most
technologically advanced, and most powerful navy in history. However, the price that the
nation pays for naval superiority has caused erosion of the number of ships in the fleet to the
point that there are chronically insufficient resources to fulfill the U.S. Navy’s global
commitment. The chief of naval operations (CNO) has stated the requirement for 313 to 324
battle force ships (see Table 1). However, the fleet hovers at about 280 ships, and this number is
unlikely to increase significantly without substantial additional investment in new construction
or significant service life extensions of ships in the inventory. The naval shipbuilding plans that
could quickly bring ship numbers to required strength are unaffordable in the context of a
constrained shipbuilding budget. Simply put, numbers count. Unless the overall cost of the fleet
can be driven down dramatically without sacrificing military superiority, the U.S. Navy will
remain short of resources to cover the need.
The biggest cost driver for naval shipbuilding is mission requirements. Quality and high
performance cost money. Battle-force ships will never be inexpensive. However, the
shipbuilding community has the obligation to help the requirements community by instituting
technology initiatives, process initiatives, and policy revisions that result in game-changing
influence on the requirements–cost tradeoff process. In addition, there are a myriad of issues
driving shipbuilding costs that do not influence mission requirements, and the community could
adapt them for all shipbuilding programs. This paper explores the needs for substantive
improvement in shipbuilding costs as follows:

• Cultural changes in the approach to requirements, ship design, and ship construction
that could reduce the overall cost of battle force ships;
• Process changes and design tools that could substantively reduce the time and cost to
design and construct naval ships; and
• Technology improvements that can simplify and reduce the cost of ship construction
and life cycle maintenance.

The 30-year shipbuilding plan sent to Congress with the FY 11 budget requires a pace of
12–15 ships per year of all types.1 However, the SCN budget for the past decade has provided
only 7–9 ships per year. There is little prospect of the SCN budget increasing in real terms, so the
shipbuilding plan is likely unaffordable.2 The naval ship design and construction community
must embrace many changes in order to give the CNO options for building the battle force ships
required by the 30-year shipbuilding plan.

1
Report to Congress on Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for FY 2011, February 2010.
2
O’Rourke, R. Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress. Congressional
Research Service, December 2009.

1
2 Naval Ship Design and Construction: Topics for the Research and Development Community

TABLE 1 Naval 2020–2024 Baseline Force Level Type/Class, 2009 Benchmark

Aircraft carriers 11
Large surface combatants 88
Small surface combatants 55
Attack submarines 48
Guided missile submarines 4
Ballistic missile submarines 14
Amphibious warfare ships 31
Combat logistics force ships 30
Maritime prepositioning force (future) 12
Support ships 20
Total battleforce level 313
SOURCE: Report to Congress on Annual Long-Range Plan for
Construction of Naval Vessels for FY 2011.

CULTURE CHANGES THAT COULD HELP DRIVE COST OUT OF SHIP DESIGN
AND CONSTRUCTION

The naval ship design and construction community has a deeply rooted culture and is very
successful. Therefore, it is difficult to change. The institutions, traditions, and funding streams
are well established, as are the policies and procedures. The problem is that this successful
institution now faces a situation in which the existing methods and cultural norms are failing the
Navy due to high costs. Something must change. The community has a choice between
controlled dramatic change and waiting for the inevitable uncontrolled change as a result of
massive budget cutbacks. The research-and-design (R&D) community, as a team member, can
assist the ship design and construction community with controlled change through the analytic
tools and support processes that will be the underpinning of that cultural change. This assistance
can be provided in support of the following proposed initiatives:

• Pervasive commonality;
• Completion of ship design before construction begins;
• Earlier involvement of shipbuilders in the design process; and
• Modular outfitting, construction, test, and insertion of payloads.

Culture Change—Pervasive Commonality

Reduce the Number of Ship Types

The most important change that the community can make is to mandate commonality on a broad
scale. This starts with reducing the number of ship types, the most fundamental unit of the
business. If the navy could cut back the “Type/Model/Series” of ships from the current 19, then
the cost to train sailors, equip, sustain, overhaul, and modernize the fleet can be cut dramatically
by reducing redundant expenditures and buying in quantity for the remaining ship classes. The
Future Force Study of 2006 found that the navy could perform its mission with reduction of the
Sullivan 3

existing 19 ship class variants to about 11 total or even fewer.3 The Naval Air Force is
undergoing this same transformation and should be used as a template for the ship community to
use the same process.
Clearly, the navy cannot reduce the ship type numbers immediately without reducing
force structure, so the transition should occur over time as future force requirements are fulfilled.
The community must discipline itself to adapt existing hull forms to new missions and to make
future hull configurations adaptable to multiple missions. The latter concept requires an entirely
new approach to naval ship design, which both the shipbuilders and the research community can
foster. However, adaptation of existing hull forms also can benefit from the research community,
in that tools that speed redesign and re-use for new missions could reduce the cost and time to
convert existing ship design baselines to new mission suites.
The R&D community can assist in many ways. First, if a reduced number of hull forms
are to be used then the remaining types should be optimized for the best combination of speed,
endurance, maintenance, upgrade over service life, and simplicity of construction. The R&D
community can assist with modeling tools, mission analysis, and adaptation of best practices for
simplification of hull structure, construction techniques, and simplification of distributed
systems. Where existing hull types are to be modified for new missions, again, the R&D
community can assist by making it easy to perform “what-if” studies with existing hull forms
through advanced design tools.

Reduce the Number of Combat System Baselines

The concept of reduction of type/model/series should next be applied to the shipboard combat
systems configurations. Today, the navy is carrying 16 surface ship warfare system hardware and
software configurations. The burden of sustaining these baselines costs billions in acquisition,
sustainment, and modernization funds. As in platform reduction, there is also an existing
example that can be used as a template. The submarine community has evolved their shipboard
warfare systems into a rolling configuration management system that keeps the baseline current
at low investment costs by using commercial hardware and a low-cost software update process.
Periodic peer reviews determine which new software and hardware configurations will be
introduced across the submarine force. Software components are kept small enough and discrete
enough to allow a broad range of competitors to continue pushing forward with low cost. A rigid
refresh and install cycle is enforced to keep the fleet current without incurring the large cost of a
major upgrade.
In order to benefit from the submarine force approach, several prerequisites must be met:

• The shipboard computing environment must be designed to utilize commercial

computer hardware systems.
• The shipboard physical configuration must be designed for continuous replacement
and upgrade during the life of the ship.
• The community must commit to continuous evaluation of the marketplace to both use
new developments and to prevent the Navy from drifting into a technology dead end.
• The software development and deployment environment must be kept dynamic, fresh,
and under rigid configuration management.

3
Naval Sea Systems Command. Future Force Study, 2006.
4 Naval Ship Design and Construction: Topics for the Research and Development Community

• The software development process must be truly open.

• The retesting of major combat systems computing environments after alteration of
hardware, firmware, or software, should be automated and streamlined to reduce time and cost of
retest and recertification.

First, the shipboard computing environment must be kept current and in the mainstream
of commercial development. That is, navy shipboard hardware must utilize the current state of
commercial hardware. If allowed to stray into a fixed or custom hardware solution, the navy–
contractor team is likely to slip into two undesirable consequences:

• The custom hardware solution must be maintained and refreshed at increasing cost of
shipboard spares for the lifetime of that system. The spares, being a custom solution, will be
increasingly hard to find and expensive to purchase.
• The navy falls behind the commercial state-of-the-art as the custom solution is
bypassed by the marketplace in its drive for better hardware.

The R&D community could help with all phases of this effort. Starting with surveillance
of the industry to watch for software, hardware, and firmware trends and guarding against
technology dead-ends, in which the navy does not follow market trends. Next, during the
development of new mission suites or large combat system upgrades, the R&D community could
work together with hardware vendors to assure maximum hardware flexibility and upgrade and
to stay in touch with the state of the art. This also requires a different architecture aboard the
ship, as the combat systems decks, foundations, and installation mounting must account for
shock, acoustics, cooling, and HVAC environments that can tolerate commercial standard
hardware. Finally, to speed the cyclical upgrade of tactical software, automated software
algorithm test and retest systems can reduce certification and recertification time to a fraction of
today’s requirements.

Reduce the Number of Types of Major Shipboard Equipment

Large numbers of major equipment configurations exist in the navy’s inventory. For each major
shipboard hull, mechanical, and electrical system, reduction of the numbers and types of
equipment that serve the same function is required in order to achieve cost reduction in both
acquisition and life cycle of the system. The benefits follow:

• Opportunity for quantity buy and long-term relationships with supplier and in-service
agent; and
• Reduction of logistic trains for sparing, training, and logistic technical
documentation.

There are several cultural impediments to taking full advantage of this initiative. First, there is
little incentive for sharing major hardware configurations across classes of ships. Second, some
major components simply cannot serve multiple ship types, due to acoustic, shock, and mission
requirement differences. For example, a ventilation fan that is acceptable on a surface ship may
not have an acceptable acoustic signature for a submarine application.
Sullivan 5

Examples where this approach is feasible include main propulsion components, electrical
power generation, transmission, and distribution components, distributed systems such as
ventilation, high-pressure air, hydraulics, refrigeration, fresh and seawater systems, fire main
system, and equipment handling systems such as cranes, winches, and elevators.
The R&D community can help this effort by adapting database search and mining tools to
make readily available to any designer or shipbuilder the full selection of components, but more
important, could show designers which fittings, components, or commodity items are most
commonly used on other platforms and allow for direct inclusion in the design process. This
requires interlacing the various tools available today, from vendor database, to Internet tools, to
3-D product model integration, and finally the ability to include and translate CAD models from
the more common types available to small contractors (AUTOCAD, RHINO, etc.) to load into
the high-end product models (CATI, Ship Constructor, Intergraph, etc.).

Reduce the Number of Small Components and Distributed Systems Configurations

The navy supports a very extensive infrastructure and logistics system to service the hundreds of
thousands of parts, many of which serve the same function. Driving the need for so much support
infrastructure are the following cultural realities:

• Most shipbuilders purchase components from suppliers that are located within 100
miles of the shipbuilder.
• There is no commonality requirement for purchase of small components between ship
program managers.
• There are few remaining navy-standard design components that can be competed
broadly as build-to-print procurements.
• There is not currently a contractual mechanism for sharing cost burden among
separate shipbuilding contracts for pooling of purchasing power for components or for
commodities such as steel, pipe, fasteners, and welding consumables.

Clearly, as for major shipboard components, there are great opportunities for both quantity buy
and reduction of logistics infrastructure.
The R&D community could help this aspect of culture change if it is willing to find a
way to work with the shipbuilding community in the details of ship design, where selection of
components from accepted catalogs or vendor supply lists is done on a day-to-day basis. In
addition, the R&D community can devise tools that facilitate re-use of the more complex parts of
distributed systems. Examples are standard fire station layouts, standard hydraulic power plant
layouts, standard pressure reducing stations, etc.

Culture Change—Completion of the Ship Design Before Starting Construction

The logic of completing the ship design before starting construction is obvious and intuitive, yet
the pressures of budget, programmatics, and workforce considerations drive the navy to launch
into construction of the lead ship before the design is ready. This must stop. The consequences
for the most recent shipbuilding programs have been reflected in late deliveries, dramatic cost
increases for the lead and initial follow ships, large numbers of design changes, and significant
6 Naval Ship Design and Construction: Topics for the Research and Development Community

reliability issues on the first few ships of each class. This has been most pronounced for the SSN-
21, LPD-17, LCS, and LHD-8.
The culture change needed is for the leadership teams in both the navy and the
shipbuilders to adapt a strategy for carrying the design to completion before significant
construction work begins. In order to achieve this change, several steps are needed:

• Assessment of the impacts of extending the design phase up to 2 years before start of
construction and re-assessing the transition gaps between classes at participating shipbuilders.
• Predictive tools that allow the navy leadership to assess the true overall cost impacts
of early start of construction.
• Adaptation of the commercial shipbuilding practice of prohibiting change and
imposing a very large financial penalty for changes. Such a policy shift could occur if:
− The design is complete and thoroughly executed such that most changes are
unnecessary.
− The ship is designed for total modular construction and outfitting, with rigorous
interface control so that the most volatile technology areas (combat weapon systems) are
pre-outfitted, tested off-hull and inserted without disrupting the actual ship construction,
test, and delivery program. (See section on modularity.)

The R&D community would be hard-pressed to assist in a culture shift that required ship designs
to be complete before moving into the heavy construction phase. However, the ability to
accurately predict costs (mentioned later in this paper) under several design–build scenarios
(parallel, series, series-parallel) could greatly aid the acquisition and design community when the
press of warfare requirements or budget pressures forces early choices to be made. Additionally,
if the design tools are good enough and confidence in the design solution can be increased, then
the community could develop the patience required to allow the design to fully develop. This
confidence can come as a result of tools that the community could develop.

Culture Change—Earlier Involvement of Shipbuilders in the Design Process

The current ship design and construction process allows for the shipbuilding community to
participate in the design once the basic configuration of the ship is set. However, earlier
participation of the shipbuilder in the design and engineering process could produce additional
cost savings from a more complete systems engineering standpoint. Once a decision to design a
new ship is made, the community should first decide how the ship is to be constructed. A
detailed construction and outfit sequence, that fully encompasses the efficiencies of the
shipbuilder and major subcontractor facilities, is as important to cost reduction as are the systems
tradeoffs in the ship design process itself. The design and construction sequence needs to be
addressed as a continuum. There are several cultural and process obstacles to be overcome
before the navy–shipbuilder community can maximize the benefits of early teaming on ship
design and construction.

• Competitive pressure during pre-contract award prevents total sharing of good ideas
from competing shipbuilders who want to maintain the competitive advantage.
Sullivan 7

• Execution of inherently governmental responsibility for system engineering,

integration, and incorporation of mission requirements tradeoffs often closes out potential
shipbuilder-provided cost reduction ideas before the shipbuilders can participate.
• For ships with intensive combat systems, such as destroyers and cruisers, early
understanding of the interfaces between the warfare systems and the supporting ship
infrastructure is not as robust as it could be because of both competitive pressure and immaturity
of the warfare system design.

Though deep-rooted practice will tend to oppose progress in this area, the R&D community
could still assist. The reluctance to share information could be overcome potentially by new
contracting tools, early teaming arrangements, and better systems engineering tools.
Collaboration tools can be developed that permit integration of competitive information without
revealing proprietary information. Modern collaboration software that supports complex
negotiations should be adapted for the ship design process.

Culture Change—Modular Outfitting, Construction, Test, and Insertion for Payloads

Clearly, the naval shipbuilding establishment has migrated to modular construction over the past
30 years, and this has allowed the shipbuilders to streamline processes and build the ships far
more efficiently. However, more can be done, and the community is potentially ignoring the
gains that could be made on approximately 50 percent of the ship cost—the combat weapon
system. We hold the shipbuilder accountable for total ship delivery cost, yet in most cases the
shipbuilder has little control over the timing, technology issues, integration, and test program for
the combat system. The integrated installation and test program can account for a year or more of
additional time in the shipyard, and it represents a very high cost to the program. Therefore, a
new way to achieve a true modular payload installation is needed.
The navy should consider assembling, pre-outfitting, integrated testing of combat weapon
systems off-hull, so that final installation, checkout delivery of the integrated warship takes
weeks instead of months or years. This philosophy could be applied to

• Combat system computing plant, command and display hardware;

• Sensors; and
• Weapon delivery systems.

There is precedent for this approach in the LCS program. Although other factors have driven the
costs of LCS to very high levels, the modular payload concept is still valid. In essence, the ship
has a basic backbone computing environment and rigid physical and electronic interfaces.
Virtually any sensor, processing system, or weapon delivery system that can meet the interfaces
can come onto the ship. This concept should be expanded to all future warship classes. Taken to
extremes, the navy could take delivery of the ship and execute final installation and checkout at a
naval facility, saving time and money at the delivery shipyard.
The R&D community can assist this paradigm change by providing the research on
structural integrity, damage control aspects, and optimal distributed systems engineering for
ships that are predominantly modular. The community also can help to engineer the off-hull test
facilities and simulation and stimulation programs that will be required if this concept is
followed to its full potential. In addition, new ways of thinking about modular interfaces must be
8 Naval Ship Design and Construction: Topics for the Research and Development Community

explored rigorously and characterized in order to facilitate widespread adaptation of this

technique.

PROCESS CHANGES THAT CAN HELP REDUCE THE COST OF SHIP DESIGN AND
CONSTRUCTION

The R&D community could develop a family of tools to facilitate the process changes that
reduce costs of design and construction of ships. Most of the tools are analytic models that
facilitate decision making for leaders. Some can be adapted from existing advanced software
from other industry applications, but some must be developed directly in support of the ship
design and construction process. The research community should focus on

• Systems engineering tradeoffs,

• Cost analysis,
• Physics-based ship design and engineering tools,
• Collaboration tools and environments, and
• Data mining instruments.

The development of these tools cannot be in isolation or even monitored with quarterly or annual
updates. In fact, the development should be supervised directly by the ship design and
engineering community and the naval research community as part of continuing relationship.
The current organizational relationships and control of funds should be investigated for
streamlining or modification in order to best support the overarching goal of combat capability at
reduced cost.

Process Change—Full Development of the 2-Pass, 6-Gate Systems Engineering Process

Recently developed by the acquisition and requirements community is the 2-Pass, 6-Gate
Systems Engineering Process.4 This process incorporates the principles of total systems
engineering, early involvement of the war-fighting community, early involvement of the
prospective contractors, and thorough vetting of cost estimates before moving forward with a
program. Though still in the first few years of execution, this system holds great promise for
avoiding surprises in the future, but there are several supporting processes that must be
developed in order to realize the full potential of this new instruction. A diagram of this process
is shown in Figure 1, but the process is laid out fully in SECNAVINST 5000.2D.

• Highly intelligent cost estimating tools that cover development through disposal,
• Highly intelligent alternative analysis tools,
• Physics-based modeling of system parameters that can robustly model expected
performance and behavior of new configurations of ships and ship systems in a combat
environment, and
• Program analysis performance tools that accurately predict project success with
metrics that are readily available and objective.

4
SECNAVINST 5000.2D of October 16, 2008.
Sullivan 9

FIGURE 1 Illustration of two-pass, six-gate review process (SECNAVINST 5000.2D).

Process Change—Improvement of Ship Design and Construction Analytic Tools

The inability to predict ship acquisition cost accurately is a great impediment to budget
formulation and execution for shipbuilding programs. It also has eroded the navy’s credibility
with Congress. Dramatic improvements in cost analysis tools are needed. Areas for improvement
include the following:

• Prediction of R&D costs based on system complexity, subsystem technology, and

state of development;
• Modeling of design and construction workforce requirements;
10 Naval Ship Design and Construction: Topics for the Research and Development Community

• Modeling the cost of design tools, including configuration, mass properties tools,
Product Logistics Models environment;
• Modeling of ship integration and test costs;
• Assessment of the costs of facilitization of prime shipbuilding contractor, principal
subcontractors, and warfare system contractors;
• Modeling of the effects of concurrent workloads from multiple contracts at all
contractors facilities;
• Assessment of cost of government warfare center participation in development and
execution; and
• Probabilistic cost analysis tools that give the range of estimates and the probability
that the estimates will not be exceeded.

Cost estimating tools could benefit from an approach that takes advantage of the massive
computing power available today, and also the availability of highly intelligent search engines.
The principle should be if cost data exist anywhere, the navy should be able to access them. This
means that the cost of any component or commodity could theoretically be queried, stored in the
navy–shipbuilder cost database, and periodically updated, either from catalog information, bid
pricing, or other publically available information. The navy should adapt one or more of the
commercially available search engines for this purpose and mandate its use for all shipbuilding
programs. Furthermore, if shipbuilders could continue to execute the Common Parts Catalog
initiative of the National Shipbuilding Research Program (NSRP), the search engines could
query this catalog for component cost tabulation.
The ship design community should not accept the notion that a novel ship, ship system,
or warfare system architecture will necessarily degrade cost estimating fidelity. Fundamentally,
even the most unique systems must be built by design teams; constructed from parts that are
fabricated by a contractor team; and assembled, integrated, and tested by the construction and
delivery team. The components and the processes both should be predictable unless they have
not been attempted before in any industry.

Process Change—Higher Fidelity Physics-Based Tools for Ship Design

Ship design physics-based modeling tools have improved dramatically in the past decade.
However, there are still significant gaps in both knowledge and tools for day-to-day ship design
tasks. The R&D community could help develop better tools across the board. As is the case for
cost estimating tools, the new generation of physics-based modeling tools should take advantage
of the improving state of both computing power and existing commercial software tools.
However, the design community still lacks tools in many areas that affect the cost of the ship.
Included in any serious list of needed tools are

• Development and experimental verification of sea-keeping analytical models that

accommodate high sea states, accurately predict maneuvering performance, and can be used to
predict performance of atypical hull forms.
• Development and confirmation of shock response models for components, systems,
and total ship hull performance.
• Development and confirmation of ship signature models that include
Sullivan 11

− Acoustics modeling that can accurately depict transmission paths, transfer

functions, speed and equipment lineup variations, and speed dependency, and aspect; and
− Electromagnetic modeling that includes steady state, equipment lineups, speed
dependency, aspect, and transmissions, including radar cross-section.
• Analysis and production of design rules for electric power distribution behavior,
including transient analysis, that accommodates multiple electric plant architectures and multiple
shipboard electric power distribution configurations and models a variety of load conditions,
including transients, load analysis, continuity, and current interruption of major loads.
• Utilization of NAVSEA’s Alternative Propulsion Study4 to devise a modeling tool
that assesses multiple propulsion plant configurations for optimization for operating profile, fuel
economy, and mission redundancy and flexibility.
• Development of battle damage models that accommodate a variety of ship types;
encompass the blast, shock, and fire effects of a robust library of weapons; and model multiple
shot lines for effect on ship operability and survivability.

Process Change—Collaboration Tools

Addition of shipbuilder and major supplier input into earlier stages of ship design requires a
family of tools that does not exist today. For example, there are several product development
environments for overall ship design (e.g., CATIA, Ship Constructor, Intergraph) that are not
compatible. The NSRP has worked for over a decade to develop graphic and data exchange
standards without a satisfactory result. Also, integration of lower level data from less robust
design tools (e.g., AUTOCAD, RHINO) is not at the state where data can be uploaded reliably to
the higher-level tools. A concerted effort to rectify this situation is needed. Either a robust
translation protocol or industry consensus on adaptation of a single product model environment
is needed. Areas for improvement must include the ability to

• Translate the ship product model into drawing extractions with first-time accuracy
and quality;
• Exchange product data information across different design tools; and
• Translate design product model information into life cycle ship training, maintenance,
and record information.

Process Change—Collaborative Cost Reduction Environment

As discussed in the previous section, pervasive commonality of ship hull types, major
components, and combat systems baselines could go a long way to reduce costs across the
spectrum of ship designs. However, within each ship design, the approach to ship arrangements
and distributed systems engineering needs fundamental change. Design optimization processes
that encompass lessons learned from shipbuilding strategies, particularly those in the commercial
shipbuilding practice must be adapted wherever they are not precluded by mission and damage
control requirements. This requires intense collaboration between the navy, the designer, and the
shipbuilder to examine every detail of the ship for cost reduction opportunities. It is imperative
that the shipbuilders and major equipment suppliers participate in this process. The guiding
principle must be simplicity of design, reduction of labor, and reduction of configuration options
12 Naval Ship Design and Construction: Topics for the Research and Development Community

in order to reduce ship design and construction to the minimum number of processes and
sequences required to produce a satisfactory ship. Examples include

• Piping systems—reduction of joints, bends, custom pipe runs, and limiting the
number and schedule of pipes allowed.
• Electric power distribution systems—modular design, standardization of components,
and smart design of cable runs.
• Information technology infrastructure—standardization of approach, standardization
of hardware, standardization of software, and refusal to allow new configurations for the sake of
new technology when existing solutions are current and functional.
• Examination of components for commercial substitution where MIL-SPEC is not
required. If MIL-SPEC conditions are required, examination of potential to change the
environment so that commercial substitution can still meet MIL-SPEC requirements.
• An environment where the shipbuilder can recommend reduced cost items and
configurations that meet government form, fit, and function at lower cost.

Process Change–Database Mining

Modern database mining tools have experienced a dramatic increase in performance and
flexibility in the last decade. The availability of these improved tools presents an opportunity that
the ship design and construction community should exploit. Suggested areas for research include

• Exploitation of component cost databases (previously mentioned).

• Improvement in logistics administration by intelligent analysis for the myriad of
logistics databases in use today. The generation of information from these databases that support
logisticians in decision making can then be pulled forward to the design process in order to truly
include life cycle considerations directly into ship and ship systems design configuration.
• Querying worldwide databases of threat weapons to accurately represent threat
characteristics in order to assess battle damage predictions.
• Routine querying of families of emerging technologies in order to enable the ship
design and construction community to stay abreast of technical developments that could either
help or that might threaten our ships and that could be game changers in cost reduction.
• Support of acquisition program assessment of our contractors by displaying key
business performance and intelligence attributes through querying, sorting, and displaying
databases on contractor performance, stock price, financials, and industry trends.
• Creation of robust configuration management and maintenance tools from the data
that is available but currently not accessible enough to be used. An example is generation of
OPNAV 4790/2K work requests. A sailor should be able to scan a barcode on the component or
system, or scan a barcode in a notebook, and the entire “2-Kilo” except the actual problem
should be generated automatically. This is a life cycle cost improvement that the ship design and
construction community must install before ship delivery.
Sullivan 13

TECHNOLOGY CHANGES THAT CAN DRIVE COST OUT OF SHIPBUILDING AND

CONSTRUCTION, AND LIFE CYCLE MANAGEMENT OF SHIPS

The R&D community is most experienced with technology development, as opposed to the
culture and process changes discussed in this paper. This rich development experience can be
focused on several issues that are barriers to the ship design and construction community
reducing construction costs further. Some topics that are very worthy of study (many are already
under study and development) are

• Composites,
• Mechanical actuation,
• Coating systems,
• Integrated electric ship,
• Bearing surfaces and lubricants,
• Shipboard network technology and design,
• Construction joining processes, and
• Efficiency improvements.

Some of these areas are global, some are very mundane. All are worthy of exploration in order to
continuously improve the shipbuilding environment and to assist the shipbuilding industry in its
drive for efficiency. Many of these focus areas will also decrease life cycle cost to the navy long
after construction is complete.

Technology Change—Shift from Metals to Composites for Large Portions of Ship

Construction Materials

The aviation industry has shifted more and more to composites, principally to improve
performance and to reduce weight. The ship community can follow this lead to a certain extent,
but there is an additional driving need for ships—corrosion prevention and control. Broad use of
composites for piping systems, structural components and systems, and outfit and furnishings
can save weight and prevent deterioration from environmental effects. Test results for railings,
pipes, gratings, and other simple structures are very promising. Cost is an issue. The R&D
community can assist the design and construction community by completing the research needed
to understand design parameters, rules for fabrication, fatigue performance, and load-carrying
ability of composite structures.

Technology Change—Shift of Motive Power for Shipboard Applications from Hydraulics

and Pneumatics to Electro–Mechanical Actuators

Pilot programs onboard ships and submarines (e.g., torpedo room actuators on the VIRGINIA
class and control surface actuator project at DARPA) have shown great promise and reliability of
operations for electromechanical operation. These results should lead us to greater breadth of
prototype and pilot programs with the goal of eliminating hydraulics and pneumatics. Finally,
where they cannot be eliminated, the applications should be limited to local generation and use
of power, instead of using distributed hydraulic and pneumatics, which require high-pressure
piping systems, accumulators, pumps, and numerous valves.
14 Naval Ship Design and Construction: Topics for the Research and Development Community

Technology Change—Coating Systems and Corrosion-Resistant Materials

Corrosion is the number one maintenance issue in the U.S. Navy. Poor in-service performance of
coatings continues to the single most important driver. Dissimilar materials operating in a
seawater environment pose a major challenge. So does the extensive use of materials that do not
stand up to a seawater environment but continue to be used in ship construction because they are
inexpensive. This is not strictly a construction issue, but it is a life-of-ship issue. It must be
solved, however, by the ship design and construction community in order to hand over the ship
to the operations and maintenance community in a condition that coatings and basic materials
will last the lifetime of the ship. Research and testing into coatings for weather surfaces, inboard
environmental surfaces, tank coatings, and numerous other applications should continue until the
community has a new generation of coatings and basic construction materials that

• Are durable enough to last the entire life of the ship without replacement or
refurbishment,
• Are easy to apply (coatings), and
• Reduce environmental impact.

Technology Change—Electric Ship

The navy has been executing an incremental approach to the electric warship. The time is now to
move to a wholesale embrace of the electric warship. Unless a global unified approach to a full
product line is adapted, the navy will not benefit from the potential cost savings and operational
flexibility of this technology. A common approach must be developed for overall architecture,
power generation systems, distribution systems, and propulsion system prime movers. This is a
fundamental shift in naval ship architecture that must occur to support modularity in design and
the flexibility to accommodate future weapons and to sustain the power demands of future
sensors. A decision-making process should be presented to get the navy, ship designers, ship
constructors, and industry leaders together to come to agreement on development paths,
standardization, and approach for

• Shipboard electrical distribution system design philosophy;

• Current, voltage, and frequency standards;
• Harmonic distortion standards;
• Generator type and capacity;
• Propulsion motor type and capacity;
• Motor controller type and flexibility;
• Current interruption and switching devices, especially for high voltage applications;
• Transformer, rectifier, inverter devices; and
• Electric power control software design philosophy.

Technology Change—Bearing Surfaces and Lubricants

The life cycle of numerous shipboard components depends on bearing surfaces and lubricants.
The mechanical design community that supports ship design and construction should be
supporting the shipbuilding community with better bearing surface materials, better design
Sullivan 15

analysis tools to predict bearing life, and continuing research on lubricants. The goal should be
bearing surfaces that do not need replacement or refurbishment for the life of the ship. Clearly,
there will be a cost tradeoff required, since improvements may be more costly at installation, but
less expensive on a life cycle basis. Recent engine bearing failures since 2005 have shown that
the navy needs to pay far more attention to lubrication and to filtration, purification, and
conditioning of lubricants. The R&D community can help bring the ship design and construction
community up to the state of the art in commercial practice.

Technology Change—Shipboard Network Design

As shipboard networks evolve, the ship design and construction community must follow the lead
of commercially available technology, data distribution systems, and installation techniques. The
navy currently has in excess of 15 configurations of shipboard non-tactical networks and is in the
midst of transition from older network architectures to Gigabit Ethernet on selected ships.
Further, the community should make a class-by-class cost and service-based decision on
migration of networks to an industry standard. Finally, there is a real need to develop a
continuous network evolution process that does not tie up the ships for extended periods of time
and that guarantees assurance of service in both classified and unclassified environments.
Evolution in this technological area has been dramatic. Unless the avy and its contractors have a
forward strategy, the shipboard networks will continue to lag behind industry standards. More
important, the maintenance and upgrade of shipboard networks will stagnate due to redundant
costs for multiple configurations.

Technology Change—Construction Joining Processes

Joining processes—welding, fastening, and gluing—continue to drive high costs in shipbuilding.

Continuing research into automation, fidelity, and reduction of time and cost should continue for
materials joining processes. The fastener industry is evolving to support both aerospace and
automotive applications. The shipbuilding industry should examine these developments for
shipboard applications. Finally, increased use of plastics and composites will inevitably generate
the need for industrial processes for joining plastics and composites and also processes for
joining composites and plastics to metals in a variety of joint designs. The research to support
industrial processes is not robust today.

Technology Change—Efficiency Improvements

Energy consumption on naval ships has been a secondary consideration for decades. However, as
the price of fuel increases and as the energy demands are driven up by large mission system
loads (radars, electromagnetic aircraft launch and recovery, future weapon systems) the premium
on energy efficiency is already a major driver of life cycle cost. There are numerous ways the
R&D community could assist. Dramatic reduction of energy consumption is required across the
fleet if the fleet is to be insulated from the fluctuating cost of energy. Areas for research for naval
applications cited in the recent press5 include

5
Jean, G. V. Navy’s Energy Reform Initiatives Raise Concerns Among Shipbuilders, National Defense, April 2010.
16 Naval Ship Design and Construction: Topics for the Research and Development Community

• Alternative fuel sources such as biofuels,

• Alternative propulsion systems,
• Combined propulsion systems such as diesel and gas turbines,
• All-electric ship (as described elsewhere in this paper), and
• Design tools that accurately predict life cycle energy cost so ship designers can
evaluate the tradeoffs for propulsion plant and electric plant selection based on mission need
requirements.

The secretary of the navy has set out five specific goals, three of which apply to the fleet, and
which need support from the R&D community6:

• Mandatory evaluation factors for contract awards that include energy costs,
• Sail a green strike group with alternative fuels and propulsion systems by 2012,
• Reduce petroleum use in non-tactical vehicles (not applicable to ships),
• Increase alternative energy ashore (not applicable to ships), and
• Increase alternative energy use navy-wide.

Unless the navy has the tools to make dramatic improvements to shipboard energy consumption
through efficiency improvements and alternative power systems, there is a real possibility that
fleet could be severely restricted in operating time. Training and readiness would suffer. More
important, tactical planners would be forced to consider energy consumption as a restrictive
input to operations.

CONCLUSION

The most pervasive need facing the U.S. Navy today is insufficient numbers of ships and a
shipbuilding plan that cannot be supported by its current and projected fleet. The CNO continues
to highlight this issue. For example, he recently stated, “People look quickly at our Navy and
think ‘My, those ships are so incredibly powerful and there seem to be so many of them.’ They
don’t always consider that the 283 ships that serve in our Navy today are the fewest that we’ve
had in our fleet since 1916.” 7
The R&D community can greatly aid the ship design and construction community in its
most important thrust—reduction of the cost of naval ships and shipboard systems. The R&D
community must support not only technical developments but also technical developments that
in turn support process change and culture change in the ship design and construction process.
The coming crisis in shipbuilding—the inability to finance the required fleet—demands that the
collective ship research, development, design, and construction community fundamentally
change the focus to cost reduction strategies, technologies, and processes.

6
Ibid.
7
Roughead, G., CNO. www.navy.mil, May 2009.