Future Ship Design

The Navy is currently engaged in the design of future ships to replace Burkes and Ticonderogas and is embarking on a family of unmanned vessels.  That leads us to ask, what is the Navy’s recent track record of new ship designs?  I think we all know it but here’s a listing of the last several surface ship classes the Navy has attempted and how they turned out: 

 

• Constellation – already a failure in terms of being an obsolete design dating back to the early 2000’s
• Ford – massive failure in terms of cost, schedule, and initial performance due to concurrent construction utilizing non-existent systems like EMALS, AAG, and weapon elevators
• Zumwalt – complete failure due to lack of a mission and the cancellation of the ship’s main weapon system
• America – failure due to cost, inability to operate the F-35B, and lack of a well deck
• AFSB/MLP – failure for complete lack of mission
• JHSV – mechanically success but lacking any useful mission or purpose
• LCS – unmitigated disaster for every conceivable reason
• MkVI Patrol Boat – utter failure due to lack of mission; already retired

 

Well, that’s not encouraging! 

 

The most common reason for failure in the designs is the lack of a Concept of Operations (CONOPS).  As we know, ship designs are – or should be – derived from a solid, specific, detailed CONOPS which, in turn, is derived from the military strategy and operational planning.  Further, there has been no public discussion of any war games, simulations, or tests conducted in any remotely realistic fashion which would provide a basis for design.  There has also been no discussion of the form of future naval combat and, therefore, the requirements that would derive from that form.  So, we lack all of that … and yet the Navy is proceeding with new ship designs, anyway!

 

Someday, people are going to be discussing the future ship design problems and there will be those who attempt to defend them by saying, yes, there are problems but they only became apparent in hindsight.  Hogwash!  The problems are visible here and now.  But, I digress …

 

Lacking any of the preceding design bases, let’s see if we can, at least, lay out some general requirements (as opposed to specific designs) for future naval surface combat ships.  These would be requirements and characteristics that seem obvious just by considering developments and trends in technology that would impact combat.  Again, this is not the basis for an actual ship design as that can come only from a consideration of strategic operational requirements and a specific CONOPS.  However, certain technology driven requirements seem fairly obvious.

 

Note:  The following discussion was triggered by various commenters across multiple posts.  There have been too many people who contributed to the genesis of this post to individually name them but I thank everyone.  Your comments, on any subject, whether I happen to agree or not, are always considered and often trigger new posts so … well done!

 

 

Stealth – This one seems obvious and yet we need to clearly understand the rationale.  As future missiles grow ever faster and more powerful, the likelihood of a successful missile attack increases.  One way to counter this is via stealth.  If a missile can’t find a target, it can’t hit it.  So, the purpose of stealth in ship design is not to render the ship ‘invisible’ – there’s no such thing – but to decrease the number of attacking missiles that can find the target and get a viable sensor lock.  The harder we make the attacking missiles work to get a viable sensor lock, the fewer attacking missiles we’ll have to deal with.  See, “Stealth For Dummies”. 

 

This stealth encompasses not just radar signature but infrared and visible, among others.  We tend to focus on radar but IR and optical stealth will be just as important since missile manufacturers are increasingly going to multi-mode sensors.  Optical stealth, in particular, is almost totally ignored but is an area that needs much more research.  Many manufacturers are attempting to develop missiles that find and track their targets passively (IR and optical) and we can anticipate those modes becoming much more important in future combat.

 

Stealth also includes electromagnetic emissions control (EMCON).  During the Cold War, our ships routinely operated in EMCON mode and this will become even more important in the future.  We cannot emit any stray radiation in any part of the spectrum.

 

Power – Power is one of those commodities that you can never have enough of.  One can easily foresee future needs for lasers, rail guns, larger and more powerful radars, more extensive active emitting ECM suites that dwarf today’s outputs and power needs, electrically manipulated coatings (adaptive camouflage), electric UAV catapults, more powerful sonars, microwave emitters, podded propulsion systems, and a host of other power gulping equipment.

 

UAV – We’ve discussed the need for large numbers of small, cheap, expendable UAV scouts to provide situational awareness for surface groups.  We’re not talking about one or two Fire Scouts, as the Navy is doing, but many dozens of RQ-21 Blackjack-ish UAVs.  Thus, a ship would need the ability to store, launch, recover, fuel, maintain, and control dozens of UAVs simultaneously.

 

Guns – In a peer war, we will quickly reach a point where missiles have been expended and become a rare commodity given the length of time required to build new ones.  What happens when the Navy suddenly goes from ordering 50 -100 missiles per year to needing tens of thousands per year?  The manufacturers simply won’t/don’t have the manufacturing capacity.  What does that leave?  Guns!  Large caliber naval guns!  These will be useful for anti-surface warfare, ground support, and cheap area bombardment.

 

If both sides do their job in terms of emission control and counter-recon, it becomes increasingly likely that opposing forces will, literally, stumble across each other at short range or that initial longer range combat will devolve into short range combat (see, “Future Naval Battle”).  Large caliber guns will rule the day, at that point.

 

AAW – We’ve demonstrated that the most likely AAW scenario will involve horizon range and closer engagements which points to the need for extensive close/medium range missile defense in the form of ESSM and lots of CIWS/SeaRAM.  The close in CIWS/SeaRAM requirement, in particular, needs to be greatly increased over the current Navy practice of one or two units per ship.  We need to mount a minimum of six and, preferably, eight to ten or more units per ship.

 

EW/ECM – History has proven that electronic AAW defense is the most effective form of missile defense, as demonstrated in the data in Hughes’ book (Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat).  Every ship needs extensive Electronic Warfare/Electronic Countermeasure capabilities including the ability to conduct tailored, active emission defense.  With a slight nod to the underwhelming SLQ-32/SEWIP, the Navy’s electronic defenses are a joke.  We also need to give serious thought to a dedicated EW/ECM escort ship.

 

Armor – Nothing could be more obvious than the requirement for extensive armor to mitigate damage and losses.  The cost and time frame for replacement of lost ships absolutely demands that we build ships as robustly as possible.  We need to return to the WWII standard of armoring, as a minimum starting point, and then begin a desperate research program to upgrade armor concepts to modern technological standards and methods.

 

While we noted above that large caliber naval guns are needed, it is not enough to simply have a gun, even if it’s a large caliber gun.  It must be in an armored gun mount.  Otherwise, a gun will be quickly disabled in combat due to simple shrapnel damage, even without a direct hit.  In WWII, designers ensured that the gun mounts were heavily armored because they recognized that a ship with a disabled gun was useless.

 

 

 

In the same vein, there are some things that are contraindicated in our generic ship design requirements:

 

VLS – VLS is good, to a point.  However, the desire for ever larger numbers of VLS cells is unproductive.  We’ve demonstrated that beyond a certain point, extra VLS cells are of no use and simply wasteful of ship’s volume, add cost, and risk the loss of expensive, unexpended missiles when the ship is sunk.  No one believes a Burke can withstand more than a couple of hits without sinking (no armor, limited damage control due to limited manning, etc.) so whatever unexpended missiles are in unused VLS cells will be lost.  That’s very expensive missile inventory literally going down the drain.  VLS cell numbers should be sharply limited, appropriate to the type of ship.

 

Superstructures – Large superstructures are detrimental to ship’s functions (loss of deck space), add top weight (instability), and increase the ship’s radar and IR signatures despite stealth shaping.  See, “Ship Superstructures”.

 

Minimal Manning – We have more than enough proof that minimal manning is a disaster in terms of maintenance and it will be even more of a disaster in combat as we will lack bodies to replace the dead and wounded and to conduct damage control.

 

 

 

Summary

 

We see then, that we can readily identify characteristics that are likely to be requirements for future naval designs.  Of course, not all of the identified characteristics will be appropriate for every ship type and most will be applied on a proportional basis depending on type.  Still, that gives an idea of what future ship designs should be moving towards.  I leave it to you to compare the Navy’s current trend towards small, unarmored, marginally stealthy, almost defenseless vessels to our anticipated requirements.  What we quickly realize is that the Navy’s path seems to lead in the opposite direction from a robust, powerful, survivable, hard to sink, ship with lots of firepower.  How the Navy thinks that opposite direction will win wars is, frankly, beyond me.

 

Even at the higher end – meaning large, manned ships - the Navy’s surface warship design concepts seem wedded to some hybrid of Burkes and Zumwalts;  Burkes because they can’t let go of the past and Zumwalts because … ah … they … I got nothin’.

 

So, even without a detailed CONOPS, we can anticipate and produce a decent WARship by understanding the trends in combat technology.  The Navy, on the other hand …