The Littoral Combat Ship attempted to use modular systems in shipping containers to allow rapid reconfiguration of the ship that in its basic form is ill-armed with lots of empty internal space. That hasn't worked out on speed or cost.
And here come the Norwegians:
Kongsberg has taken the wraps off a new multirole warship design that the company says extensively uses commercial systems and can be built in commercial yards for substantially less money and in less time than traditional warships.
With warship procurement becoming eye-wateringly expensive, Kongsberg’s defense and aerospace arm is pitching its Vanguard design as a way to save money via a 50 percent life-cycle cost reduction.
Vanguard will have what is effectively a plug-and-play capability, enabling the multipurpose vessel to pack containers — that meet this International Organization for Standardization’s guidelines — with equipment to swap missions as diverse as hydrographic survey to anti-submarine, area-denial and other roles in a matter of hours.
I don't know how well protected that ship will be with civilian construction standards.
But if this design concept takes off, maybe those shipping container modules will become cheaper if more widely used.
Which might make the building blocks of the modularized auxiliary cruiser, as I proposed in Military Review as a power projection platform for AFRICOM, more available.
