Warship Design and Its Management: A Systems Engineering Perspective

This textbook establishes the foundational engineering principles that govern warship design and describes the strategic thinking that informs the conceptualisation of new warship classes. It explains the distinctive features of the warship acquisition process and develops the reader’s understanding of the warship as an integrated, complex system. Coverage spans the full spectrum of activities required to take a new warship concept to operational readiness, from initial concept exploration through delivery and acceptance. Topics include synthesis and analysis during design development, management of design through successive phases, systems integration challenges and methodologies, and lifecycle support considerations for modernisation and sustainment.

Key Features:

• Covers detailed Measures of Performance (MOPs), a Test and Evaluation Master Plan (TEMP) and clear flow-charts that depict systematic design methodologies across major shipboard systems.
• Traces the evolution of warship design over the past millennium and drawing implications for contemporary and future designs.
• Provides practical insight into how performance requirements translate into system-level solutions and how multidisciplinary decisions affect overall platform capability.
• Includes thirty real-world case studies that illuminate applied problems, trade-offs, and lessons learned from actual programmes.

This book is suitable for ship design university courses and naval training programmes in Warship Engineering, as well as for stakeholders involved in warship’s design, construction and acquisition.

Pramod R. Kulkarni has a career spanning thirty-six years in the Indian Navy in the Corps of Naval Constructors. During this tenure, he has executed complex New Product Development and R&D projects covering the entire product life cycle of Warships - from their Conceptualisation, Design, Development, Acquisition, Construction, Operation, Repair, and Modernization, in various roles in middle and higher management at Warship Design Bureau, Shipyards, Naval Dockyards and R&D organisations. He has headed the Forward Design Group of Warship Design Bureau and has been Warship Production Superintendent at shipyards - Garden Reach Shipyard and Mazagon Dock Ltd. In addition, he has taught and researched the subjects of ‘Warship Design’ and ‘Warship Naval Architecture’ at Indian Institute of Technology - Delhi, for over ten years. He has headed the Naval Construction Wing, Applied Mechanics Department at IIT-Delhi, steering the program on Warship & Submarine Design. His qualifications include B.Tech (Mechanical) from Naval College of Engineering, PG Diploma in Naval Construction from Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, M.Sc (Naval Architecture) from University College London, Ph.D (in Warship Aerodynamics) from Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi and M.M.S (Master of Management Studies) from College of Defence Management.