Modeling the Ship as a Weapon System

Viewing a ship as a weapon system is not a new concept. An excellent example is the Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) Submarine. Within its community, the FBM is perceived as a weapon system consisting of the weapon subsystem, the navigation subsystem, and the ship subsystem. There are good engineering reasons for this view: allocating resources, organizing information, and providing coordination. Further, as a weapon system the ship must respond to weapons execution orders as well as direction from all safety and protective systems. In practice, all warships are designed as weapons systems but the integration of their systems varies within wide limits. The net result is that weapon system performance may become decoupled from key ship design factors. In addition to the failure to achieve the necessary integration of the weapons subsystem components, weapon system performance may be considered to be synonymous with mission success at the expense of understanding those factors necessary for mission survival. This paper presents a model of a ship as a weapons system that provides a framework for the trade studies that impact the ship. It characterizes both the offensive and defensive interactions with the environment and provides context for the development of the ship’s subsystems. Introduction This paper is a result of the author’s experience with the ship design and integration process. The exposure has been as a result of integrating two combat systems and leading a radar design team developing a family of sensors for a future platform. The overall impression from these experiences is that the ship design process is a series of compromises that are evidenced by the allocation of degradation of performance rather than to improvement of performance. There are several reasons for this perspective. First the combat system decisions were made in a vacuum with the basic ship parameters set before the combat systems elements were selected. The common paradigm of the ship design process is the design spiral. It typically starts with ship parameters and can be very restrictive in that the combat system elements were selected as a compromise to accommodate weight, power, cooling and manning restrictions resulting from the preselection of a ship design. Second, this approach does not factor in the requirements of the ship to participate as an integral subsystem of the Battle Force. There is no model that the author is aware of that could have produced the needed parametric examination between weapons system performance and its impact on the ship size and cost. It is the premise of this paper that the ship should be treated as a weapon system within the larger concept of a family of systems comprised of the elements of the battle force. This approach is consistent with a top down systems engineering approach such as that shown in Figure 1.