This Proceedings article has a reasonable proposal:
The Navy must leverage modular plug-and-play operation systems in two different-sized, moderately armed and manned baseline hulls. The larger hull would fill the Graham/Bosworth role of “carrier of large objects” with reconfigurable holds and flight decks, while the smaller hulls would fill the “scout fighter” role. Neither term, however, fits today’s parlance well. In fact, because of the concepts presented here, naming the variants so that they meet both traditional and future naming convention and concepts proved exceptionally difficult.
For the sake of simplicity, we chose a more mythic naming concept of Leviathan and Cerberus — Leviathan for the large and capacious ship, Cerberus for the smaller but equally multimission craft. But, to press the concept farther, the modular systems and interfaces would be designed so that the Leviathan class could carry any or all of the Cerberus -class modules, while the Cerberus class would only be limited by the volume and size of modules. True reconfiguration, true modularity. Not only following the CNO’s dictum that “we must decouple the platform and the payload” but moving toward the 20-foot equivalent unit that transformed break-bulk cargo ships to modern container ships, a concept of truly universal and interchangeable platforms and payloads.
Other than calling them Leviathan and Cerberus, which make me cringe and think I have to make a saving roll before using them, I like the proposal.
And I have to say the "leviathan" has too much humor associated with it ever since I read a Dave Barry column (so old that it doesn't have a web signature) about male egos and a proposal to market condoms in different sizes. I believe Barry wrote that the sizes would be large, jumbo, and leviathan. But you may not have that terminology issue.
Anyway.
I especially like the proposal to move toward 20-foot equivalent units for the system modules that would make up the payload of the ships.
If the fleet itself used these modules, the unit-cost of the modules would go down, and if there are extra modules, we could use the exact same modules used for Navy large and smaller (but not small--these hulls have to traverse oceans, remember) hulls, we'd have cheaper versions to use to create what I called Modularized Auxiliary Cruisers.
Of course, containerized system modules the Navy ships wouldn't use would still be needed. Many of the ship's systems common to any type of warship would be built into the hull, I assume. And those intrinsic ship systems would need to be modularized to turn a container ship into a warship capable of using the other common mission modules usable on either Navy ships or Modularized Auxiliary Cruisers.
Pity Proceedings didn't take my article when I submitted it five years or so, ago. I think it would have contributed to the debate. But the editors sat on it for over a year before rejecting it after I prodded them to give me a yes or a no. Perhaps unfairly, I've always assumed that the long decision time was because the article had merit but there was some worry that such a Modularized Auxiliary Cruiser would, in the eyes of Congress which votes for the money, become an alternative to conventional warships rather than a supplement for conventional warships.
But making all our warships use mission modules would reduce that threat. Indeed, if the smaller hulls are built in large enough numbers, it might be cheaper to just put minimal system modules on that hull to carry out the peacetime missions I envisioned for a Modularized Auxiliary Cruiser.
If that's the case, the Modularized Auxiliary Cruiser truly would be just a wartime expedient to put more hulls in the water. I'm fine with that, too. Heck, if the war is with China, there should be a lot of container ships looking for work once a blockade of China kicks in.
