Design and specification of a warship combat system

The paper has come about as the result of four years´ intensive development work on a combat system, and it seems clear from this experience that the quality of personnel involved is no guarantee of a successful outcome. The problem seems to lie in a failure to keep pace with the technological nature of modern systems. This can be seen in three interconnected areas of difficulty: (a) it has led to a communications gap between the user and the engineer which makes it difficult for the former to explain his requirements in a form sufficiently informed and precise for the latter to implement; (b) it has tended to subordinate the system´s essential purpose to the demands of the internal, often highly complicated, technology; (c) it has led to the possibility of systems with a size and level of sophistication well beyond the capacity of a single developer, or even a group of developers collaborating under existing methods. The author addresses these areas of difficulty by suggesting an approach which will ensure that the design and specification stages cease to be stumbling blocks in the development of a warship combat system. It advocates a disciplined system whereby the user´s requirements are gathered, related to the environment with which the system must interact, and modelled in a way which is both faithful to the user´s intentions and illuminating to the design team