Includes supplemental material. / This report outlines the results of a two quarter Total Ship Systems Engineering (TSSE) Capstone design project undertaken by the students at the Naval Postgraduate School. The project was under the direction of Professors C.N. Calvano and R.Harney. / Currently, no system exists that provides a sea-based distributed aviation platform capability. The emergence of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) / Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs), the continued U.S. Navy focus on the littorals, the desire for force distribution, the need for operational cost reductions, and the advent of Network Centric Warfare (NCW) all continue to support the requirement to re-evaluate how littoral operations will be conducted in the future. Given this background, a bottom-up design of a ship supporting a primarily UAV/UCAV air wing in a low to medium threat environment is of significant interest. SEA ARCHER meets this interest. This report outlines a design that meets the future needs for distributed aviation with a high-speed, highly automated platform. Large gains in reduced manning through automated systems for both operation and damage control helpmeet the demanding needs for the future of the Navy at reduced operational costs. The report will outline both the Mission Needs Statement (MNS) and Operational Requirements Document (ORD) for the ship that was developed. The analysis of alternatives that was conducted to determine relative size requirements for the ship in presented in the next section. The concept design that resulted as a result of the Total Ship Systems Engineeing process in then presented. Finally, a detailed look at the analysis and trade studies that were conducted in presented in order to show the more detailed analysis that was conducted in designing the ship.

Includes supplementary material. / Sea TENTACLE is a proposed afloat platform whose primary mission is to utilize the state-of-the-art technology of unmanned vehicles to monitor and neutralize all subsurface enemy threats in the littorals. This mission can be specified further as anti-submarine warfare, mine warfare and maritime surveillance. The design philosophy of Sea TENTACLE embodies the ideal of providing a multi-mission capable sea frame extending network-centric warfare into the littorals. The design goals of the TSSE team were first to develop a platform to deploy, recover, and maintain unmanned vehicle (e.g. UUVs, USVs, UAVs) and second to enableto ship to act as an afloat network operations center for distributed assets. Allowing all units to work together seamlessly to conduct focused missions in the littorals makes the Sea TENTACLE a creitical component within the network-centric environment. The versatility of its cargo hold and modular design allows Sea TENTACLE to be outfitted dynamically to complete a veriety of secondary missions including humanitarian aid, salvage and spacial operations support. Sea TENTACLE's combat management and operations system will employ the Enterprise architecture design enabling C4ISR capabilities that will meet emerging network centric warfare needs.