Survivability in warship design

The initiative taken by the AVT panel to organise this symposium on combat survivability is much welcomed. From our perspective, the possibilities for the survivability experts within NATO to exchange their research efforts have always been rather limited. This symposium under sponsorship of the AVT panel has the additional advantage of bringing together researchers from all disciplines, being land, air and sea. This presentation will focus on the “sea vehicles”. The authors share many years in survivability research and its application in naval warship design for the Royal Netherlands Navy. However, the reason for this address is related to their involvement in the NATO AC/141 (NG/6) SG/7 “On ship combat survivability”. Mr. Keuning chaired the group between 1992 and 2000. Mr. Smit is part of the NL delegation since 1996. The Subgroup reports to Naval Group 6 “On Ship design”, being the naval design group under the NNAG. Contrary to what its name suggests the actual charter of the Subgroup is on vulnerability of surface ships. As such it was the forum for the vulnerability experts in warship design within NATO. Participating nations are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, United States of America and The Netherlands. Not only standardisation and interoperability issues were addressed, but also R&D topics like development of design tools, full-scale experiments, design aspects, concepts for vulnerability reduction measures etc. Because it established a forum for exchange on R&D related subject, delegations comprised both vulnerability experts of the navies and researchers from the defence laboratories. In line with the charter of the Subgroup, this presentation will address vulnerability. It is the authors’ intention to discuss vulnerability in warship design and share their views on developments, which are considered of relevance for the R&D. This is all based on their personal views as well as experiences obtained from the co-operation within this NATO group. Hopefully these views are of interest to the research community gathered at this symposium.