Novel Ship Hull Forms Still a 'Tough Sell'.

Naval research chief advocates 'risk-taking' in the development of technologies

When it comes to weapons programs, the United States has become "risk-averse," said Rear Adm. Jay M. Cohen. The upshot for the U.S. Navy, he asserted, is that ships have been built in the same manner for more than a century.

Intense media and congressional scrutiny of defense programs naturally leads to risk aversion, said Cohen, who is the chief of naval research. In his job, however, he believes that he has an "obligation to be risk tolerant," he told a conference of naval engineers.

Naval engineers, said Cohen, "are struck by the fact that ships have been built the same way since the [age of the] caveman--they have a frame, stringers and skin." The only difference, he said, is that cavemen used animal skin and today, shipbuilders use steel.

Cohen has been trying to pique the Navy's interest in new ship full forms, which many experts believe would be suitable for small combatant vessels that operate close to the coast. This summer, various U.S. West Coast ports will see one of these novel ships, called Slice, partly funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

The Slice ship is a drastic departure from conventional mono-hull forms. It is a variant of the Swath (small water-plane area twin-hull) design, which was conceived more than two decades ago. The Navy's first Swath ship will be an oceanographic vessel called Agor 26. ONR awarded a contract in 1999 to Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics and Surveillance Systems and Atlantic Marine to build the ship. Atlantic is a commercial shipyard in Jacksonville, Fla.

Agor 26's Swath hull is 182 feet long, with an 88-foot beam. It is powered by an electric drive.

Slice, named for the way the ship moves through rough waters, is a speedier variation of the Swath hull form design, explained R. Robinson Harris, director of business development at Lockheed Martin. It was built at Pacific Marine, a shipyard in Hawaii.

With the Swath, waves do not affect most of the hull of the ship, Harris said in a briefing to reporters. The buoyancy is provided by two large torpedo-shape submerged hulls, one on each side. A small Swath ship is more stable than most larger ships, said Harris. But it lacks speed.

In both Swath and Slice, the twin hulls are submerged, unlike the twin-hull catamaran.

Slice was introduced in 1997. It has four underwater pods. The propellers are on the forward pods. Slice is 104 feet long, with a beam of 55 feet. According to Harris, it is "as stable as you please" in 10-12 feet waves, moving at 30 knots. The waves swirl beneath the primary hull of the ship.

Lockheed Martin hopes to sell this ship commercially in the Seattle area, as a passenger ferry.

It was Adm. Cohen's idea to take Slice to the West Coast on a promotional tour, said Harris. The final stop will be in San Diego, during Fleet Week in October. The tour was funded mostly by ONR. Lockheed Martin contributed $250,000. Slice will retire for the winter and, next spring, it will sail through the Panama Canal and proceed up the U.S. East Coast, said Cohen. Several members of Congress asked for Slice to sail up the Mississippi River. Cohen expects that the novel ship can be used as a recruiting tool. "If I can't get the public or Congress to the facilities, I have to bring naval research to them," he said.

ONR also is trying to promote new technologies in electric propulsion. Slice does not have electric drive, but Cohen said the ship would be a suitable candidate for electric propulsion. In conventional systems, gas turbine or diesel engines drive the shaft, so the engines have to be connected to the shaft, at the bottom of the ship. With electric drive, the prime mover engines on the ship are used to generate electricity. The electricity is transferred from the main power plants to a motor that turns the propellers. The power plants, thus, can be located anywhere on the ship.

The benefits of electric drive, proponents said, are lower fuel costs and the ability to use electricity to power other subsystems on the ship, such as weapons and cargo elevators.

Electric propulsion is among the priority areas that ONR categorize as "future naval capabilities," said Cohen. He expects that this technology will receive "hundreds of millions of dollars" in new funding.

The Slice concept, however innovative, is far from an obvious fir into the current structure of Navy ships, experts said.

"Slice has a future. I just don't know what it is," said Jack E. Hamilton, vice president of AMI International, a naval consulting firm in Bremerton, Wash.

"It provides a good stable platform," he said. "The question is, what mission do I apply it to? And how do I fit that into the total force. That is not clear right now."

Commercially, it has a viable opportunity, as a fast commuter ferry on which passengers would nor get sea sick, said Hamilton. "I am not sure how Slice would fit into a naval environment."

The U.S. Navy would be unlikely to build a ship for the sole purpose of preventing seasickness, he said. "That has not been a primary concern in any ship. Sailors get over it."

AMI's president, Guy Ames Stitt, agreed that there are "great benefits to new hull forms." But there are few organizations willing to take the risk in funding and proving that those hull forms can work, he said. "Except for the Scandinavian countries, very few navies in the world will accept the risk of applying novel hull forms. They are very tough to sell."

Lockheed Martin, meanwhile, has proposed to the Navy a concept for a more advanced version of Slice, which company officials hope will fill a niche for the Navy: a fleet of small, fast, stealthy, multi-purpose ships to conduct operations near the shore. The director of the Naval War College, Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, coined the term "Streetfighter," to describe such a ship.

The Streetfighter concept consists of a fleet of small vessels that would run to and from the large capital ships. This would keep the large ships safely away from the coast. Cebrowski said the Navy should consider deploying such a fleet within the next 20 years or so.

His vision for a Streetfighter fleet has stirred controversy within the Navy, which, like the other military services, is a conservative organization. But Cebrowski's message appears to have resonated among some Navy leaders at the Pentagon. According to a senior Navy official, six three-star admirals recently met to discuss "how to put the dollars in the budget to fund Cebrowski's idea."

If the Navy, one day, decided to build Streetfighter, Lockheed Martin already has a five-year plan to make that happen using Slice technology, said Harris. The company would develop a "littoral combat ship," which Harris nicknamed "Slice on steroids," to demonstrate the role of a fast, stable small ship. It would be stable in high seas, with an operational range of 4,000 nautical miles and a maximum speed of 50-60 knots. Harris would nor specify a price rag for this ship, but speculated it would be at least $90 million.

The 50-knot ship, said Harris, "could be a modification of Slice, but we are not going to limit ourselves to that. The design could be different."

But even though the technology might be available to develop a Streetfighter in the near future, the Navy, logistically, is not set up to operate with such a ship, said retired admiral Donald Pilling, who recently served as vice chief of naval operations. "Cebrowski's idea of having small netted platforms fits nicely into the concept of network-centric warfare," said Pilling in an interview. But there is a problem. Streetfighters would need "mother-ships," they would not be able to operate autonomously. In the Navy, said Pilling, "we live in our ships for six months. So we need things like stores, barber shops. These ships would not be big enough."

Currently, he explained, "we deploy our ships and they don't have to go to their mother-ship every three or four days to refuel."

Cebrowski is proposing not only a new ship, but a new way of operating, said Pilling.

Capt. Deborah Deacon, from the Naval Sea Systems Command, cautioned that Streetfighter would be used as a "pick-up truck." It's not designed to operate independently, but as part of a force, she said during a conference of naval engineers. "We are nor talking about designing Streetfighter with today's technology. ... The goal is to design and deploy Streetfighter in 2020."

Some naval experts noted that other nations' navies have successfully deployed small combatants, so there is no reason to think that the technologies are not mature enough. "If the Navy decides to develop a small, fast combatant, there are technologies out there and ships have been built in other countries and in the commercial marine industry that begin to address the technical challenges," said Kai A. Skvarla, a naval engineer at John J. McMullen & Associates.

Skvarla co-authored a paper called "Streetfighter: Sampling Alternatives of Analysis for Future Small Combatants," which was presented during the annual conference of the American Society of Naval Engineers.

Streerfighter, he said, has been loosely defined as a small frigate-type ship that probably displaces between 250 and 2,500 tons, it's likely between 40 and 120 meters in length, capable of speeds between 35 and 65 knots.

Examples of successful small combatants include:

* The Danish Navy has built glass-reinforced plastic sandwich composite naval ships since the 1980s. The material was selected to save weight and maintenance costs and was found to have beneficial nonmagnetic properties, in support of counter-mine operations.

* An all-composite naval vessel is the flagship of the Royal Swedish Navy, the Visby Class. It is made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic and displaces about 600 tons.

For the U.S. Navy, however, the problem is not the technology, but how to apply it to its operational realities, said Stitt. "Just because a ship works for the Swedish Navy, it may not work for the U.S. Navy.

"Other navies' operational concepts are fundamentally different than ours. They don't work in a battle group," said Stitt.

The commercial yachting industry has developed advanced technology. The caveat, said Stitt, is that "yachtsmen can afford to pay high dollar for capabilities, even if the capability has to be developed. Not all navies are willing to do that."

Nevertheless, Stitt believes that Streetfighter has a future, because it could be used as a vehicle to bolster the U.S. shipbuilding industry.

An exportable Streetfighter is what the U.S. industry needs, he said. "Our builders don't have designs that are exportable. No one is buying DDG-51s [destroyers]. More buyers are interested in light frigates and corvettes.

France, Germany and the United Kingdom collectively earn about 30 percent of their annual defense budget from exports, said Stitt. "They purposely design their equipment to meet their own naval operational requirements, but always have a mind toward the export potential. We have none of that. They rely on these exports to finance their defense budget. We don't."

The U.S. Navy, he added, takes "no responsibility for any export potential for our industry. Our exports equal about 4 percent of U.S. defense spending."

Streetfighter is needed, said Stitt, so the Navy can "reasonably and cost effectively maintain an industrial base." He estimated that these vessels' price tags would range from $120 million to $275 million, including weapons and sensors.

The U.K. government has been promoting a prototype triple-hull -- or trimaran --as a possible Streetfighter. A trimaran called the Research Vessel (RV) Triton, developed by the British Defense Evaluation Research Agency (DERA), has been touring the United States this summer. The RV Triton is 297 feet in length, with a beam of 74 feet.

For the past five years, the U.K. government has evaluated the potential use of the trimaran hull form in future warship designs.

This hull form, said U.K. officials, offers advantages over an equivalent mono-hull, such as reduced hull resistance at higher speeds, more stability and flexibility in the design. The RV Triton was built by Vosper Thornycroft, a British shipyard. The ship, said DERA officials, will reach a speed of 20 knots and has the endurance to cross the Atlantic Ocean without refueling.

Navy to Phase Out Steam Catapults on Carriers

Steam and hydraulics generally are considered a "maintenance nightmare" on board Navy ships, particularly aircraft carriers. These systems are labor intensive and costly to operate, officials said.

That is the thinking behind a $322 million, seven-year program to replace the steam catapults that have launched carrier-based aircraft for decades, with electromagnetic devices.

An electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) is planned for the next-generation carrier, called CVNX-1, said Capt. Dudley Berthold, Navy program executive officer. The Navy plans to develop CNVX-1 during the next decade, A follow-on carrier, the CVNX-2, potentially could have, in addition to electric launch catapults, an electric aircraft arresting system, said Berthold.

Steam catapults not only are expensive to maintain, but also limit the types of aircraft that can be launched from carriers, explained George Sulich, EMALS team leader at the Naval Air Systems Command.

EMALS is being designed so the Navy can launch a wide range of manned and unmanned aircraft, from small drones, to large warplanes such as the Joint Strike Fighter.

The program currently is in early development by two competing contractors: General Atomics, in San Diego, and Northrop Grumman Marine Systems, in Sunnyvale, Calif. This phase will end in late 2003. Next, will be a five-year engineering program to further develop the technology, before it can be evaluated for future use in the Navy's fleet.

EMALS includes four basic components, explained Sulich. It has an energy storage device, a power conditioning system, a linear motor and a closed-loop control system.

The technology that the Navy asked contractors to use is called linear induction motors, noted Michael Doyle, a Navy electrical engineer. The linear induction motors make it possible for the vehicle being launched to transverse the length of the catapult (about 300 feet) at speeds ranging from 55 knots to 200 knots, depending on the size of the aircraft.

"Linear motors can be applied to anything that requires linear motion," said Doyle. The same technology could be used to recover aircraft on the other end of the ship, or to power weapon elevators. "We are pushing the state of the art in those underlying technologies [such as] energy storage, power generation and power conditioning," he said.

The desire to simplify maintenance chores on the ship, however, "is the biggest driver" in the project, said Sulich. EMALS will perform automatic "health monitoring," which warns of system failures and keeps track of how many launches can be made before maintenance work has to be done, he added.

Sulich estimated that the Navy could save up to 30 percent in labor costs compared to steam catapults. That would generate enough savings, over several years, to pay for the cost of developing EMALS, he said.

The Office of Naval Research, meanwhile, has funded a technology demonstration for electromagnetic aircraft-arresting gear. "That project could transition to an acquisition program for a linear electromagnetic aircraft-recovery system," said Sulich. A decision is expected within the next year or so, after the Navy completes an analysis of alternatives to replace the current arresting gear.

One significant benefit of an electric catapult will be enhanced precision, said David Ohst, business development manager at Northrop Grumman. That will allow the Navy to expand the range of light and heavy aircraft that can be launched from carriers, he said.

Michael R. Reed, director of business development at General Atomics, noted that electric systems are not necessarily safer but are less labor intensive and more "high-fidelity in the ability to control the launch and the recovery."

Neither contractor provided details on their proposals, for competitive reasons. Both firms plan to compete in a future electromagnetic arresting gear program, once the Navy makes a decision to fund it.

Could Deepwater Help Lift U.S. Industrial Might?

The Coast Guard's plan to upgrade its aging fleet could help improve the competitiveness of the U.S. shipbuilding industry, regardless of the number of ships the Coast Guard buys, experts said.

The modernization effort is called "Integrated Deepwater Systems." Under this program, the Coast Guard would replace 93 cutters, 206 aircraft and all its communications systems, over a 20-year period. Three contractor teams currently are competing for a March 2002 award.

The number of ships needed to modernize the Coast Guard's fleet of cutters and patrol boats alone would generate significant business for a U.S. shipyard. But, if the Coast Guard decided to buy commercially-designed ships as part of the Deepwater fleet--instead of only traditional military-type vessels--it would spawn potentially lucrative export opportunities for U.S. industry.

"If Deepwater is allowed to have a commercial hull, we have a real shot at having the first U.S. government-built vessel that is highly exportable to many countries," said Michael J. Brown, executive vice president of AMI International, a naval analysis firm in Bremerton, Wash.

Unlike most U.S. Navy ship programs, Deepwater does not specify to contractors how many ships or aircraft to include in their proposals. The project focuses on "capabilities, not [the number of] platforms," said the program executive officer, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Patrick Stillman.

The guidelines to contractors, however, allow for "commercially available and non-developmental items" to be used as the "building blocks, components and assets of the integrated Deepwater system."

According to Brown, who specializes in global market trends in the shipbuilding industry, if Deepwater included a commercial hull, instead of U.S. Navy-specified hulls, "that levels the playing field to be able to export it." That would be a boon for the industry, said Brown, because shipyards would be able to compete in the global market, unencumbered by the export restrictions associated with U.S. Navy ships.

Northrop Grumman Litton-Avondale Industries, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Science Applications International Corp. lead three separate industry teams competing for Deepwater. Their proposals were due June 15.

Richard Turner, program manager for Deepwater at Lockheed Martin, declined to comment on the potential use of commercial hulls in his company's proposal. "It gives away my solution to the other competitors," he said. Turner noted that his team has looked at commercial vessels, such as a British trimaran.

The Deepwater project was conceived in 1998, when each team received a $7 million contract to develop concepts. In fiscal 2002, when the program starts the next phase, it will receive $338 million. The Coast Guard expects to spend approximately $10 billion over a 20-year period.

This program differs radically from traditional Navy modernization efforts, experts noted.

"When we think about the Coast Guard, we have to think in different terms from those of us who are used to Navy terms," said Norman Polmar, a naval analyst. Coast Guard ships are underway more often and perform more work per deployment than the Navy, he said. Unlike the Navy, which often takes ships to sea for combat exercises, Coast Guard cutters are, on a daily basis, performing rescue, search and anti-drug operations. Deepwater missions are defined as those 50 miles from shore. Other operations include airplane crash rescue and recovery and oil-spill cleanups.

The largest Coast Guard cutters are 12 Secretary-class 378-feet long vessels, which are comparable to navy frigates. The centerpiece of the Deepwater system is a so-called "national security cutter," a multi-mission ship which the Coast Guard required contractors to include in their proposals, to replace the Secretary-Class cutters.

The average age of current Coast Guard ships is 33 years, said Capt. Robert Parker, who commands the USS Mellon, a Hamilton-class 278-foot cutter, one of the largest in service today. By comparison, a navy surface combatant has a service life of 30 years. Coast Guard cutters have a 35-year expected lifespan.

In an interview, Parker said he hoped the Deepwater program will address the need to improve maintenance on ships and provide systems that can handle the harsh demands of long-distance sea travel. "In the Pacific, the distances are just frightening," said Parker. "Days and days of steaming, usually without seeing anyone."

The current cutters are old, so it's difficult to get parts, Parker said. The aging structures make them unsafe and vulnerable to flooding. The guns are outdated, he added, so the Navy does not buy parts or ammunition for them any longer.

The Deepwater ships will be equipped with new guns. Current cutters have the 76 mm Mk 75 gun, made by United Defense LP (UDLP), under license from Italy's Otobreda. "Ifs a terrific weapon [and] very accurate," said Parker. But, he added, the guns are old and "harder to support."

UDLP is proposing three weapons variants for Deepwater: the Mk 75 76 mm 62 caliber naval gun, and two other guns from its Bofors Defence division, in Sweden--the Mk 3 57 mm and the Mk 3 40 mm.

Otobreda, meanwhile, is proposing an upgraded version of its 76 mm 62-caliber gun, called Super Rapid. This gun is in the proposals of Avondale and SAIC. The Lockheed Martin team has an agreement with UDLP.