Flexibility of warships:an overview

As asymmetric threats arise at sea, rapid response capability has gradually become one of the most important considerations in the efficiency of warships. Warships can use more flexible configurations of sub-systems to accomplish missions using Open Architecture and modular components. Due to the decoupling of warship platforms and sub-systems, modular software/hardware can be reused across multiple classes of warships, thereby effectively reducing the building costs, system integration, maintenance and testing of warships. This paper explores ways to build a 'flexible ship' in such aspects as design, manufacturing, procurement and combat process, and several quantitative analytical methods are also proposed.