Pushing the Limit: The Role-Less Multirole Warship

Designing effective multirole vessels, particularly warships, is complicated by the potential for the roles, and the mix of roles, to change. Modularity is frequently suggested as an approach to addressing this problem. However, in most extant or near-term modular surface combatants, modularity only provides a limited multi-role capability and flexibility, with much capability inherent to the core vessel, and they might be described as “conventional vessels with modular characteristics”. This paper reports on a study conducted at UCL into the possibility of maximising the modularity of a warship to allow both flexibility in role and infrastructure but also the ability to customise the mix of capabilities of the vessel in multi-role configurations. The concept is derived from the overall topology of container ships and conversions that have been carried out on those vessels, with a minimum “seaframe” or framework into which combinations of capabilities can be added