Investigation of the Cost of Future Naval Amphibious Capability Andrew J Jones 1 (MRINA), Rob W Armstrong 2 (AMRINA) 1. Principal Naval Architect, BMT Defence Services Ltd, Future Platforms Team. 2. Naval Architect, BMT Defence Services Ltd, Future Platforms Team. Through the creation of a large number of concept designs, the cost and vessel impact of deploying and supporting amphibious operations has been investigated. The investigation has looked at capabilities such as the transportation and delivery of vehicles, landing craft, aviation and embarked troops in a number of platform types such as LPDs, LHDs and Ro-Ros. A series of trends describing the costs of the capability have been investigated to estimate the cost of individual capabilities within a design. Over the timeframe of the study, vessel manning is predicted to change and a method of predicting the crew requirement has been developed to investigate the impact of reduced manning on amphibious platform designs. This is the first of two stages of work; in the second stage the requirements for a task group will be investigated to determine the best way to deploy capability at a fleet level. . KEY WORDS: Ship design; naval vessel design; sealift; human factors and manning; computer supported design; cost modelling. NOMENCLATURE CCSS – Command and Combat Support Ship CGT – Compensated Gross Tonnage LPH – Landing Platform Helicopter LPD – Landing Platform Dock LHD – Landing Helicopter Dock LitM – Littoral Maneuver LSD(A) – Landing Ship Dock (Auxiliary) LwL – Length on Waterline RFA – Royal Fleet Auxiliary RN – Royal Navy ROM – Rough Oder of Magnitude RoRo – Roll on Roll off UPC – Unit Purchase Cost TLC- Through Life Cost INTRODUCTION The out of service dates of a number of UK amphibious classes are predicted to occur around the mid 2030’s. This coincidence of out of service dates provides an opportunity for the distribution of amphibious capability across the different classes to be reassessed. BMT conducted a study to investigate a large number of possible concept designs to inform planning decisions. This paper analyses the designs created to investigate how amphibious capability can most cost effectively be deployed and the appropriate distribution of capability between naval, naval auxiliary and commercial shipping. This exploration of the design space could assist with setting requirements for a number of classes from where further exploration of the design space and analysis of alternatives can be considered as described by Singer (2009) and Mebane (2011). Whilst looking to the mid 2030’s, the concept designs created represent an evolution of current amphibious vessel designs and
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Investigation of the Cost of Future Naval Amphibious Capability
Andrew J Jones
1 (MRINA), Rob W Armstrong
2 (AMRINA)
1. Principal Naval Architect, BMT Defence Services Ltd, Future Platforms Team.
2. Naval Architect, BMT Defence Services Ltd, Future Platforms Team.
Through the creation of a large number of concept designs, the cost and vessel impact of
deploying and supporting amphibious operations has been investigated. The investigation has
looked at capabilities such as the transportation and delivery of vehicles, landing craft, aviation
and embarked troops in a number of platform types such as LPDs, LHDs and Ro-Ros. A series of
trends describing the costs of the capability have been investigated to estimate the cost of
individual capabilities within a design. Over the timeframe of the study, vessel manning is
predicted to change and a method of predicting the crew requirement has been developed to
investigate the impact of reduced manning on amphibious platform designs. This is the first of two
stages of work; in the second stage the requirements for a task group will be investigated to
determine the best way to deploy capability at a fleet level. .
KEY WORDS: Ship design; naval vessel design; sealift; human factors and
E5 Improved Damage Control - Fixed Eductors in all
sections/ Automated Drain Down Valves/ 'Self
Healing'/ Re-routing Ring Main (and Other
Pipework)
As each of the drivers and enablers identified has a subjective
probability of reaching maturity, and none are certain of
reaching maturity, a model was constructed to allow a reduction
in crew to be estimated for a chosen confidence level.
The individual probability of each driver and enabler reaching
maturity in the timeframe of the study was subjectively
assessed. This was based on the state of the art for the
technology, if it had been achieved in a commercial or naval
application with another navy and the navy's perceived appetite
for the change. The associated impacts for each driver and
enabler were also estimated, to capture the changes that would
be required to maintain the equivalent level of capability:
1. Manpower saving - saving achieved for each branch in
each state, used as a new input to the concept model;
2. Weight impact - additional weight of systems and
equipment to replace personnel;
3. Space impact –additional space required for equipment
and systems to replace personnel;
4. Electrical impact – additional power demand for
equipment and systems required to replace personnel;
5. Equipment cost - change to UPC equipment costs
required to replace personnel.
As several enablers could be combined to achieve the full
benefit of one driver, probability trees were constructed to allow
the probability of each outcome to be predicted. The outcomes
for all the drivers were then sorted to discount combined
options, and to stop double accounting by manpower savings
released by an enabler being taken across multiple drivers.
In order to account for the probabilistic nature of the drivers and
enablers, a simulation was performed. This looked at the
outcomes of all of the possible combinations of enablers and
drivers that were captured in the analysis and acknowledges that
the enablers and drivers may or may not reach maturity. Whilst
there may be additional enablers and drivers not captured, a
sufficient number and range of options were considered to allow
the simulation to provide a realistic assessment.
The simulation also helped to mitigate any error in the
subjective probability of an enabler or driver occurring. By
averaging over a large number of outcomes, the sensitivity of
the model to any uncertainty in the individual manpower saving
or ship impacts is also reduced. The simulation allowed for a
statistical distribution to be derived and the data to be applied as
an input to the design process. The cumulative distribution
derived from this simulation is illustrated in Fig.4, which shows
the likelihood of reducing the crew number by a given
percentage.
Fig. 4. Cumulative Probability vs % Reduction in Naval Crew
The other inputs to the modelling were determined by creating
similar distributions for space, weight, power and UPC. A
cumulative probability of 50% was chosen for the study (as
likely as not to save at least that proportion of the crew)
resulting in a 30% reduction being selected for the study.
Not all drivers and enablers are appropriate for each design. For
less complex vessels with small starting crew numbers, a
number of the combat management system technologies are not
appropriate. Removing these from the analysis resulted in only a
small change in crew reduction, and ship impacts, but had a
large impact on equipment costs.
The outputs from the lean manning model are shown in Table 6;
these are additional requirements necessary to support a
manning reduction and are in addition to any effect of changing
the crew number.
Table 6. Lean Manning Model Inputs to Design Process.
Model Item Output
Reduction in Crew 30%
Weight Impact 45te
Space Impact 86m2
Electrical Impact 45 kW
UPC impact (Complex vessels) £9.5M
UPC impact (Simple Vessels) £6.2M
Jones, Andrew J Investigating the Cost of Future Naval Amphibious Capability
7
RESULTS
Design Drivers The design set created covers a wide range of capabilities and requirements. By inspecting the models and arrangements created for each concept it is apparent that the designs are either driven by achieving a suitable payload, the arrangement of the capability or by internal volume requirements. These three groups can be seen when plotting the displacement against length (similar to the hullform regions described in Fig.1) and have been shown as high, medium and low displacement per unit length respectively in Fig.5.
Fig.5 Concept design LWL(m) vs Disp (t)
As shown, there can be significant variation in the displacement for the same length vessel and the frontiers have been found at which payload and internal volume are driving the vessel principal dimensions. For comparison a number of existing amphibious platforms are also shown, and whilst this study has not explored every possible combination of capability or all possible variations to the requirements or hullform, these limits represent a practical frontier at which payload or volume appear to drive the vessels principal characteristics. For the designs with a high displacement to length ratio (Disp/L), it can be seen that across all the capability areas they typically have a medium level of capability but with a low to medium level of Aviation and Command and Control as shown in Table 7.
Table 7. Distribution of Capability (High Disp/L)
The designs with the lowest Disp/L conversely typically have either a high or low level of capability for each capability area. These can be split into two groups, commercial designs with a low overall capability and naval platforms with a higher level of capability for Command and Control, Aviation, Embarked Force and Vehicle Lift as shown in Table 8. Table 8. Distribution of Capability (Low Disp/L)
The tables above show that certain levels of individual capabilities can contribute significantly to one of the design drivers. As the capability requirement is increased, more of the capability areas tend to drive the volume demand. Whilst all the capabilities affect the volume, payload and arrangement of a concept it is the combination of all the capabilities for a concept that determines where the concept sits, either on or between the frontiers described in Fig.5. By looking at how the capability is distributed within each design it is possible to look at the focus of the design
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Low 1 0 2 2 3 0 0
None 3 3 0 1 1 0 4
Jones, Andrew J Investigating the Cost of Future Naval Amphibious Capability
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between achieving a single capability/role or multiple capabilities/roles. Each capability was scored between 0 (none) and 7 (excellent) giving a maximum total capability score of 49. Looking at designs with a common maximum speed, the designs with a low Disp/L typically have the highest overall capability score and comparatively high variance as shown in Fig.6, indicating that they are more focused on providing a limited number of capabilities.
Fig.6 Variance of Capability for Common Maximum Speed
The concepts with a lower level of capability then sit in either
high or medium Disp/L groups and can be seen to vary by the
overall level of capability they provide.
All of the remaining low Disp/L concepts have high or excellent
Aviation capability. A significantly lower level of capability for
Aviation is included in the medium and high Disp/L concepts
indicating that Aviation capability is a significant volume
demand. When comparing the vessel size, a greater level of
capability can be achieved for the same ship size for high and
medium Disp/L concepts with a lower Aviation capability as
shown in Fig.7, indicating that the volume required drives the
ship size.
Fig.7. Concept Design LWL Vs Total Capability for Common
Maximum Speed.
Cost of Capability As the UPC is not just a result of the size of the vessel but also
dependent on a number of other characteristics and the
capabilities within the concept design, the same trend as shown
for length is not apparent when looking at the UPC. Assuming
no weighting between the capability areas, the medium Disp/L
concepts are typically more expensive for the same level of total
capability as shown in Fig.8.
Fig.8. UPC Vs Total Capability.
The same trend can be seen for TLC as shown in Fig.9.
Fig.9. TLC Vs Total Capability
As the Medium disp/L concepts have a high to excellent level of
Surface Maneuver capability, this would indicate that this is a
significant cost driver. The data set has been further investigated
to look at the effect of individual capabilities, the basis of the
crewing, how focused the design is on a single role and the total
level of capability.
Looking at Individual capability areas, it is not possible to
draw any trends from the whole data set. This is due to the
interactions between the capabilities and as those concepts with
a higher level of capability in an individual capability area also
tend to be more multi-role (as shown by Fig.6), with a higher
level of capability in other areas.
Jones, Andrew J Investigating the Cost of Future Naval Amphibious Capability
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Only a few of the data points represent a change in only one of
the capability areas, with no points suitable for analysis of the
Command and Control, Vehicle Lift and Embarked Force
capability areas. The suitable data points are shown in Fig.10.
Fig.10. UPC Comparison of Individual Capability Changes
These points show an increase in cost for increasing capability,
except for Logistics where no significant increase can be seen.
For Surface Maneuver, little increase in cost is seen between a
low to medium capability level, but a significant increase in cost
is seen from medium to high/excellent. For Aviation and
Medical, a significant increase in cost is seen between a high to
excellent level of capability.
Looking at the TLC for the same data points, the same trends
can be seen, except that there is a larger increase in the cost of
providing a high Logistics capability that can be seen in Fig.11.
Fig.11. TLC Comparison of Individual Capability Changes
The basis of the crewing is a contributing factor to the UPC
modelling, with commercial or naval auxiliary crewing used
where possible to reduce the cost of a concept. The concepts by
crew are shown in Fig.12.
Fig.12. UPC Vs Capability for Different Crewing Basis
For the concepts investigated, commercial crewing has only
been used for very low capability concepts and naval auxiliary
crewing only used for low to medium capability concepts. This
is due to the operating environment defined for each concept.
Commercial crewing is only applicable for those concepts
operating between secure ports. Naval auxiliary crewing has
been used for those concepts that would typically operate in a
relatively benign threat environment or under the protection of a
task group. The most capable concepts with naval auxiliary
crewing would be required to operate in an equivalent role to the
naval vessels to exploit their capability; this appears to remove
any reduction in UPC achieved by using a naval auxiliary crew.
The effect of just changing the crew from Naval to naval
auxiliary is shown in Fig.12 as Crew Type 1, where no real
difference has been observed.
At the higher capability level, no cost benefit can be seen. This
is also demonstrated by the number of crew required as shown
in Fig.13, where the higher capability concepts with naval
auxiliary crews have equivalent manpower to naval vessels of a
similar capability.
Fig.13. Crew Complement Vs Total Capability
As crewing costs are a significant element of the TLC, the effect
of commercial and naval auxiliary manning on costs can be seen
in Fig.14.
Jones, Andrew J Investigating the Cost of Future Naval Amphibious Capability
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Fig.14 Through Life Cost Vs Capability
Whilst the crew types can be seen to occupy different regions of
Fig.14, there are also some specific differences in the types of
capability being deployed. The naval crewed concepts have
greater Aviation, Command and Control and Surface Maneuver
capability, with the naval auxiliary vessels more focused on
delivery of Logistics, Vehicles and the transportation of an
Embarked Force.
How focused a design is on a single or multiple roles can be
seen by the level of variance as previously described in Fig.6.
Looking at the cost of deploying capability against the variance,
even though there is some scatter within the data, different
trends can be seen for high, med and low Disp/L concepts as
shown in Fig.15.
Fig.15. Average Cost of Capability Vs Variance
The high Disp/l concepts can be seen to have a lower cost per
capability point as variance increases, the opposite of the trend
seen for medium and low Disp/L. The trends are not directly
comparable as the groups also include the effect of platform
size, increasing total capability and changing focus on specific
capability areas.
The high Disp/L platforms represent smaller, lower overall
capability and low to medium aviation capability. It can be seen
for a low to medium aviation capability that specializing the role
of the platform (increasing the variance) reduces the average
cost of the capability. The designs studied were focused on
delivering Command and Control and Surface Maneuver, or
Embarked Force and Vehicle Lift capability at an excellent
level.
For the low and medium Disp/L platforms it can be seen that as
the variance increases, the average cost of the capability
increases. The designs with the lowest average cost of capability
are those with a medium to high aviation capability where
significant other capability is included. This indicates that
aviation capability is a significant driver for the cost of the
platforms, and that as the aviation capability is increased, other
capability can also be increased cost effectively.
The overall size of a platform, could also be expected to have
an impact on the average cost of capability. As shown in Fig.16,
as the vessel size increases, the average cost of the capability
decreases.
Fig.16. Average Cost of Capability Vs Waterline Length
However due to the other factors already investigated there is
significant scatter within the data and no meaningful trend can
be drawn. When the Through Life Cost (TLC) is also
investigated the opposite trend can be seen as shown in Fig.17.
Fig.17 Average TLC of Capability Vs Waterline Length.
As for the UPC trend, there is significant scatter within the data
and no clear trend can be drawn.
Jones, Andrew J Investigating the Cost of Future Naval Amphibious Capability
11
Effect of Moving to Lean Manning As the lean manning model predicted that the naval crew could
be reduced by 30% (at a 50% level of confidence), but
additional space weight and power would have to be
incorporated into the design, a relatively small reduction in the
design size and impact on the hullform arrangement was
anticipated. As the Aviation capability has a significant effect
on the topside layout of the vessel and crew accommodation
location, four designs were down selected to look at both the
effect of Aviation capability and crew number.
For designs with a high Aviation capability, the crew
accommodation is typically located within the hull as the
superstructure size is limited. Conversely, the designs with a
low aviation capability typically have crew accommodation
located within the superstructure. Little impact on ship length,
or difference between the levels of Aviation capability or
different accommodation locations was found as shown in
Fig.18, or for the TLC as shown in Fig.19.
Fig. 18. Reduction in LWL Due to Reduction in Crew
Fig.19. Reduction in TLC for Reduction in Naval Crew.
However, a significant difference was found in the reduction of
UPC based on accommodation location as shown in Fig 20.
Fig. 20. Reduction in UPC for Reduction in Naval Crew
Whilst the reduction in ship size is relatively small, a significant
reduction in the UPC and TLC can be achieved.
CONCLUSIONS
For typical amphibious platform hullforms, realistic frontiers at
which the displacement and volume are driving the size of a
design can be found. Whilst all the capabilities contribute to the
volume, payload and arrangement of a concept, it is the
combination of all the capabilities that determines where the
concept sits relative to the frontiers described. The individual
capability areas can be seen to influence the demands for
volume and payload, with Command and Control, Aviation,
Embarked Forces and Vehicle Lift having significant volume
demands.
Providing a high or excellent level of Aviation capability can be
seen to drive the platform size, achieving a lower total level of
capability compared to lower Aviation capability concepts for
the same ship length. However as Aviation is a key capability
how this can best be achieved within a task group needs to be
considered further.
Some of the capabilities have been found to have a significant
effect on the cost (UPC and TLC) of a concept, with increases in
Aviation, Surface Maneuver and Medical capability found to
individually significantly increase costs. Whilst a small increase
was found in UPC, increasing Logistics led to a significant
increase in TLC.
Due to required operational environment capability, regions can
be seen where commercial crewing can be used and where it is
beneficial for through life cost for naval auxiliary crewing to be
used.
Interactions between the capabilities can be seen to influence the
overall cost of capabilities. For concepts with a low Aviation
capability, focusing the role of the platform is cost effective,
conversely, as Aviation capability increases to a high level, the
other capabilities can also be increased cost effectively. For the
design points studied, whilst high Surface Maneuver and
Medical are expensive capabilities to include in a design, they
can be deployed as a role focused vessel with low Aviation
Jones, Andrew J Investigating the Cost of Future Naval Amphibious Capability
12
capability or added to a high to excellent Aviation capability
platform cost effectively.
Looking at the average cost of capability, no clear benefit can be
seen of moving to a large platform over a smaller platform
although this would need to be looked at further at a fleet level
to include the respective numbers of the platforms required.
A method for predicting the future crewing requirement has
been demonstrated. The impact of moving to lean manning for
naval crewed platforms has been estimated and the platform
impacts of lean manning were found to be relatively small, with
a small overall change to the platform size but a significant
reduction in the UPC and TLC.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Authors wish to thank David Lander (DSTL) for his
support throughout the study, Tom Smith (BMT) for support
in the statistical analysis conducted and BMT for the kind
permission and resources granted to complete the
investigation. All findings, ideas, opinions and errors herein
are those of the authors and are not those of BMT Defence
Services Limited.
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