IN DEPTH NAVAL SHIP DESIGN
Captain Mohayed Magzoub, R.N., head of force development in the UK MoD, proposed a blend of crewed and uncrewed vessels
considerations, whether payload-based, mission-based or software-based, and raise the question of including TL costing.
11. Liam Nugent (University of Strathclyde) – Multi- Attribute Decision Making For The Design Of A Naval Surface Combatant: Scoring for AAW missions using SBD/NADM/TOPSIC was said to comprise: RCS; R&P; seakeeping; and survivability. apply this to the complexity of naval acquisition (see Hockberger (1993) on COEA).
12. Rachel Pawling (UCL) – Every frigate a squadron: Studies of Large Uncrewed Surface Vessels: Design studies were presented, which put some detail on the vision by the R.N. head of force development (the Day 2 keynote) using “hidden UK industry” (rather than the main warship supply base) for rapid conversion to autonomous assets.
The last session started with a presentation by Chris McNair and Chris Baker (MoD) as chair and vice-chair of the RINA Developing Careers Committee. This new committee addresses what could be said (despite all the media noise on AI) to be the biggest problem for the engineering profession, as a whole. This issue applies, in particular, to the domain of naval architecture/maritime engineering, where there is urgency in recruiting anything like the numbers required of young people into the profession, as our demographics are already worryingly impacting on the maritime capability.
Whose responsibility? The last formal presentation was by David Andrews, entitled How important is it that stakeholders should better understand naval ship design? with the added answer: “Do so through (recognising) the sophistication of ESSD: design ships INSIDE-OUT”.
The latter addition was the answer to the presented “stakeholder” paper by emphasising, to a warship design audience, that which the Council of RINA had stated in 2019: “It was considered that this paper (the special edition of IJME in October 2018), which was a synthesis of his (DA) previously published research on ship design, was a seminal paper which sets the benchmark for ship designers looking to exploit new technology and techniques. As such, the paper was considered to be essential reading for all naval architects and marine engineers, and not just those working in concept design.” So, in his concluding remarks at Warship 2025, Andrews asked the audience how many of them had followed the Council’s strong recommendation to read the 2018 exposition. Very few said they had. Consequently, Andrews felt the question raised in the conference’s concluding paper, on a lack of stakeholders’ understanding of ship design, was in the end the fault of the
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ship design fraternity for not addressing the 2018 exposition, which the Council had urged the profession to read and respond to.
regarding the “stakeholders”? It had commenced with several examples (including the use of the inappropriate term “platform”) which showed how poorly the stakeholders, including the naval staff, politicians, journalists and academics, have understood the nature of naval ship design. An extensive appendix summarised some 10 books by naval historians giving “history’s view” of the performance of the Royal Navy’s warships in World War II (arguably, the last full “test”). Only one of these publications actually addressed the pivotal role of Sir Stanley Goodall, who was the DNC from 1936-44, and so the paper pays tribute in particular to the design and also to the scholarship of David K Brown, RCNC, whose several books detail technically Goodall and his Corps’ role and the performance of the British Fleet as a basis of a better understanding of what constitutes naval ship design.
From an extended argument (including the performance of the subsequent British designs in the Falklands Campaign and an analysis of the design decisions on the more recent Type 23 Frigates), the paper concludes that, in particular, stakeholders should not just take better notice of ship designers but realise competence in ship design largely resides with the naval architect. Finally, naval architects should see their role as leading on this demanding task – and read the Special Edition of 2018 , as the RINA Council called upon them to do – so they can better articulate why this is an important question for all involved in naval practice.■
THE NAVAL ARCHITECT
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