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Abstract
Today’s naval platform procurement processes are dominated by both fiscal and manning pressures that result in lean and ultra-lean-manned technologies being integrated into vessel design. Concurrently there has been huge advances over the last 5 years in ‘systems automation’ and platform autonomy. The vessels that make up tomorrow’s navies will be a force mix of manned, un-manned, or ‘optionally-manned’ platforms.
The Transition Ship (Tx Ship) is a Thales concept for the future development of naval warfare: an optionally manned trimaran that introduces the option of unmanned warships whilst retaining the alternative of keeping the man onboard during early maturation of its systems. The design showcases the benefits of optionally manned assets and offers commanders a flexible platform for anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures or intelligence gathering missions, with its technologies also helping reduce manning on conventional ships through state-of-the-art sensors and effectors.
Critical to realising optionally manned vessel operation is fully autonomous management and control of the ship’s mission systems and machinery systems. A manned Engineering Department traditionally keeps the vital systems on board available enabling Command to fight the ship, these include monitoring the performance of machinery system for extended periods, routine equipment maintenance and battle damage control. On Unmanned Surface Vessels, these functions are still very relevant but now need to be undertaken without humans onboard.
This joint paper by Tx Ship consortium members Thales, Steller Systems and Rolls-Royce, discusses the design practices surrounding power and propulsion system and auxiliary systems design considering the lean manned and unmanned missions. Central to this is the selection and optimisation of these systems with respect to availability, rather than more traditional metrics in order to enable the unmanned mission. These systems are fully integrated with the autonomous machinery controller which operates the marine systems in support of the vessel’s mission, calculates the vessel capabilities and impact of health events to assist with mission planning. The control, maintenance, and battle damage concepts designed for Tx Ship’s Marine Engineering systems address the unique challenges of supporting unmanned vessels and contribute to the vessel’s unique autonomous mission capability; these challenges will be outlined in this paper.
The Transition Ship (Tx Ship) is a Thales concept for the future development of naval warfare: an optionally manned trimaran that introduces the option of unmanned warships whilst retaining the alternative of keeping the man onboard during early maturation of its systems. The design showcases the benefits of optionally manned assets and offers commanders a flexible platform for anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures or intelligence gathering missions, with its technologies also helping reduce manning on conventional ships through state-of-the-art sensors and effectors.
Critical to realising optionally manned vessel operation is fully autonomous management and control of the ship’s mission systems and machinery systems. A manned Engineering Department traditionally keeps the vital systems on board available enabling Command to fight the ship, these include monitoring the performance of machinery system for extended periods, routine equipment maintenance and battle damage control. On Unmanned Surface Vessels, these functions are still very relevant but now need to be undertaken without humans onboard.
This joint paper by Tx Ship consortium members Thales, Steller Systems and Rolls-Royce, discusses the design practices surrounding power and propulsion system and auxiliary systems design considering the lean manned and unmanned missions. Central to this is the selection and optimisation of these systems with respect to availability, rather than more traditional metrics in order to enable the unmanned mission. These systems are fully integrated with the autonomous machinery controller which operates the marine systems in support of the vessel’s mission, calculates the vessel capabilities and impact of health events to assist with mission planning. The control, maintenance, and battle damage concepts designed for Tx Ship’s Marine Engineering systems address the unique challenges of supporting unmanned vessels and contribute to the vessel’s unique autonomous mission capability; these challenges will be outlined in this paper.