Modularity and Flexibility in Future Ship Designs
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Variable crew space Accessible equipment Flexible mission bay Additional power and cooling Extra space and volume Designing Adaptable Ships Modularity and Flexibility in Future Ship Designs John F. Schank, Scott Savitz, Ken Munson, Brian Perkinson, James McGee, Jerry M. Sollinger C O R P O R A T I O N For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR696 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication. ISBN: 978-0-8330-8722-5 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2016 RAND Corporation R® is a registered trademark. Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org Preface The U.S. Navy faces challenges in acquiring and supporting the num- bers and types of ships needed to meet national security requirements. Ships are expensive, often costing billions of dollars, and the Navy faces tough choices each year in determining what ships to procure with limited defense funds. These challenges and choices would be difficult enough in a static world. However, adversaries, missions, and technolo- gies change, requiring new capabilities for naval warships. Because of the high cost of acquiring new warships, the Navy seeks to extend the service lives of operational ships by adapting them to cope with new adversaries, carry out new missions, and incorporate new technologies. But such modernizations are also expensive and may be constrained by the available support systems and/or configuration of the ship. The concepts of modularity and flexibility are championed as ways to potentially reduce both the time and cost of modernizing in-service ships and to adapt to future uncertainties. The Navy has used these concepts in a number of programs, and they are now more broadly discussed and more widely considered in ship design and construc- tion programs. But modularity and flexibility imply different things to different people and may not—in and of themselves—provide future adaptability. Also, there are hurdles to a wider consideration of modu- larity and flexibility concepts across ship classes. To gain a better understanding of the concepts of modularity and flexibility in ship design, the Program Executive Officer for Ships tasked the RAND Corporation to develop a path that would more firmly ingrain those concepts into future ship design and construction programs, with the overall objective of reducing the costs of modern- izing ships to meet new missions or to accommodate new technologies. iii iv Designing Adaptable Ships This research was sponsored by the U.S. Navy and conducted within the Acquisition and Technology Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community. For more information on RAND’s Acquisition and Tech- nology Policy Center, see http://www.rand.org/nsrd/about/atp.html or contact the director (contact information is provided on the web page). Contents Preface ............................................................................. iii Figures and Tables ............................................................... ix Summary .......................................................................... xi Acknowledgments .............................................................. xxi Abbreviations .................................................................. xxiii CHaptER ONE Introduction ....................................................................... 1 The Navy’s Dilemma .............................................................. 1 Modularity and Flexibility ........................................................ 2 Research Focus and Report Organization ...................................... 3 CHaptER TWO Understanding the Concepts of Modularity and Flexibility ............. 7 Navy Programs with a Focus on Modularity ................................... 7 Different Types of Modularity and Relationship to Flexibility ..............11 Common Modules Across Multiple Ship Classes ...........................11 Self-Contained Modules ......................................................13 Modular Installations ..........................................................14 Modularity Is Different from Flexibility .......................................16 Flexibility Within a Ship Space ...............................................16 Flexibility by Providing Additional Space ...................................18 Flexibility Can Involve Providing Additional Ship Services Within a Space .......................................................................19 Potential Downside to Modularity ..............................................19 Current Status of Modularity and Flexibility Initiatives .................. 22 v vi Designing Adaptable Ships CHaptER THREE How Adaptability Influences Total Ship Life Cycle Costs ...............25 Impact of Adaptability on Ship Design and Construction Cost ........... 26 How Common Modules Could Affect Design and Construction Costs ........................................................................ 26 How Self-Contained Modules Could Affect Design and Construction Costs ....................................................... 27 How Modular Installations Could Affect Design and Construction Costs ....................................................... 28 How Flexible Spaces Could Affect Design and Construction Costs .........................................................................29 How Additional Space and Additional Ship Services Could Affect Design and Construction Costs ................................. 30 Effect of Adaptability on Mid-Life Modernization Costs ....................31 Predicting Design Hours ...................................................... 38 Predicting Production Hours ................................................. 38 Predicting Testing Hours and GFM Cost ...................................39 Data Caveats .....................................................................39 Potential Ways to Reduce Mid-Life Modernization Costs .................. 40 Improve Access to Modernized Equipment................................. 40 Minimize the Number of Foundations Changed During a Modernization ..............................................................41 Minimize the Amount of New Cable and Fiber During a Modernization ............................................................. 42 Increase Power, Cooling, and Data Exchange .............................. 42 Accomplish More Pre-Installation Testing.................................. 43 Improve Planning Before Modernization ................................... 43 Coordinate Modernizations .................................................. 44 CHaptER FOUR Technological Trends, the Geopolitical Context, and Historical Lessons ........................................................................47 Technological Trends .............................................................47 Unmanned Systems ............................................................ 48 Increasing Importance of the Electromagnetic Spectrum as a Weapon .....................................................................55 Contents vii Enhanced Capabilities for Long-Range Targeting ..........................57 The Increasingly Networked Nature of the Battlespace ....................59 Concluding Remarks on Technological Trends ............................ 60 Geopolitical Context and Trends ...............................................62 Near-Peer Competitors .........................................................63 Low-End and Medium-End Threats ......................................... 64 Disaster Response .............................................................. 66 Concluding Remarks on the Geopolitical Context and Trends .......... 66 Lessons from Past Incorporation of New Missions and Technologies ..... 66 Changing Offensive Capabilities May Require New Ships to Survive Them ...............................................................67 Gradual Adoption and New Procurement Are Often Desirable ......... 68 Concluding Remarks on Lessons from Past Incorporation of New Missions and Technologies ...............................................70 Conclusions ........................................................................70 CHaptER FIVE Roadmap for Future