An Arsenal Ship Design Affordable, Advanced Warfighting Capabilities

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Navy's “Arsenal Ship Concept of Operations [1]” and “Ship Capabilities Document (SCD) [2]” address a need for the design of a large missile platform that can carry massive and precise firepower, accomplish long‐range strike, and perform flexible targeting and multidimensional theater defense consistent with the policies of “Forward… From the Sea [3]” and “Operational Maneuver from the Sea [4].” The ship is designed to be a large missile magazine that receives its launch orders from remote air, land or sea forces. It is fully integrated into the joint command and control structure to assist current forces in the opening days of conflict. A major design goal of the Arsenal Ship is to limit the crew size to 50 personnel through the use of system automation, redundancy and equipment reliability, while meeting an additional constraint of limiting the sailaway price to 550 million dollars.The Total Ship Systems Engineering (TSSE) design team at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, CA used a modified repeat of the T‐AO 201 class oiler. The selection of this hull is based on mass tonnage for survivability, carrying capacity for approximately 500 vertically launched missiles and budget constraints that militate against a new hull design. The midship section of the ship is fitted with 64 eight‐cell Concentric Canisterized Launcher (CCL) modules. The Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) is incorporated in the design to provide the controlling platform the ability to remotely fire the Arsenal Ship's missiles.The design was performed at NPS under the direction of author Calvano by a group of fifteen officer students, which included authors Chase, Baumann and Null. It is believed that the at‐sea experience and thorough analysis from the officers involved has resulted in a sensible design of a creative and highly realistic solution to the Navy's call for an Arsenal Ship of the 21st Century.