Ship Service Life Reduction!
In our recent ship service life extension post (see, "Ship Service Life Extensions"), a comment was made suggesting that ships should be designed for longer lives and have the capability for future upgrades designed in so that the ship’s usefulness could be maintained for decades. This inspired me to offer a post on a better approach which just happens to be the exact opposite approach, in fact.
The Navy has spent the last couple decades trying to engineer longer life into their ships and has failed miserably.
Virtually every ship class the Navy has had has been retired early, not late. The only class that can claim some longevity is the Burkes and they are now suboptimal vessels because they lack the size and utilities to support the current desired upgrades and capabilities.
In fact, the Burkes perfectly illustrate the challenge the naval ship designer faces in trying to make a ship that can be upgraded indefinitely. It’s simply not possible to predict future technologies and their associated requirements. The only ‘solution’ is to over engineer the ship to a ridiculous degree, thus rendering it unaffordable. We could have designed the original Burkes with twice the size and ten times the power and utilities to try to anticipate future needs but then we wouldn’t have been able to afford them!
Modular payloads were supposed to be the magical solution to obsolescence with upgrades being made on a regular basis because the hull no longer mattered. Unfortunately, the hull does matter. This approach is badly flawed. We’ve discussed this many times and I won’t belabor it. You can refer to archive posts for discussions on the importance of the platform (for example, see, "The Myth Of Modularity").
All of this suggests a logical path. Given that challenges in future-proofing a ship are insurmountable the logical path is to not attempt it. Quite the opposite, the logical path is to shorten, not lengthen, ship service lives.
Put another way, the goal should not be to make ships last longer by increasing costs and complexity and building in more potential capabilities and growth margins up front. The goal should be to make ships affordable enough to replace on a more frequent basis!
Let's face it, the Navy is always going to retire ships early because they don't want to spend money on maintenance and because they desperately want new hulls all the time. Disturbingly, Navy leadership believes that building new hulls is the reason the Navy exists! That being the case, designing in longevity features is a waste of time, space, and money.
The better approach is to build smaller, vastlycheaper ships that can be replaced often enough so that the force and the technology stays fresh and current. The way to do this is to build smaller, single function, basic but solid ships.
Let's face it, the Navy is always going to retire ships early because they don't want to spend money on maintenance and because they desperately want new hulls all the time. Disturbingly, Navy leadership believes that building new hulls is the reason the Navy exists! That being the case, designing in longevity features is a waste of time, space, and money.
The better approach is to build smaller, vastlycheaper ships that can be replaced often enough so that the force and the technology stays fresh and current. The way to do this is to build smaller, single function, basic but solid ships.
For example, rather than build a Burke with AAW, ASW, ASuW, MCM (yes, that was attempted on several ships), VBSS (visit, board, search, seizure), shore fire support, and ballistic missile defense capabilities that costs around $3B, why not acknowledge that a ship and crew only has time to train for one major task and, for the Burkes, that is AAW? Recognizing that, we can take a conceptual Burke and strip out the sonar, towed array, 5” gun, 5” magazine, ASW electronics, anti-ship missiles, MCM gear (if any), flight deck, hangar, helos, helo magazines, shops, fuel storage, and crew berthing, etc. and just produce a basic AAW platform that does AAW, only AAW, and nothing but AAW. It’s a floating AAW missile barge with Aegis/AMDR sensors – likely cheaper by one to two billion dollars.
Further, we wouldn’t design and build in any excess growth margin whatsoever because when the time comes for upgrades we’ll just scrap it and build a new, up to date ship. More cost savings!
Simplicity!
Genius!
Let’s stop kidding ourselves that ships are going to last 35-50+ years (the only exception being aircraft carriers, sometimes) and, instead, design for a 20 year life span. That way, our ships will always be state of the art.
Wait, you can’t design a ship for a 20 year life span! That’s insane. No. No, it’s not. In fact, it was once the standard – we’ve simply forgotten. As documented in a recent Proceedings article, the world navies once standardized on a 20 year life span, recognizing that vessels beyond 20 years were ‘overage’. (1)
Shorter lives and cheaper, not longer lives and more expensive.
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(1)United States
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