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Today, it is reasonable to project the application of optical fibers aboard both commercial and military ships of the future. The reasonableness of such projection is clear from the fact that optical fibers have been and are being installed in a limited way in new and overhaul ship construction programs. Rationale for installation of optical fibers on ships derives from several well-known optical fiber characteristics: high bandwidth, no EMI, compactness, adverse environment compatibility, etc. It seems clear that such characteristics will be valuable on board ships. However, to amplify, future commercial ships will continue to demand operating cost reductions. This means more automation, smaller crews and, subsequently, more data transmission capacity. More automation and smaller crews also demand more remote sensors connected to control processors. Fiber sensors, if all other characteristics are at least equal to those of traditional sensors, are the best choice in conjunction with optical fiber transmission lines. Most often they require no power other than that for the optical data signal and they require no local amplification, both features avoiding complexity and reliability problems. The same arguments apply to military ships as well. However, military ships are not driven so strongly by cost considerations. One concept of a future military ship envisions a stealthy, highly automated, cruise missile launching platform. Such a ship can be minimally manned, but must, therefore, be a highly reliable, low main-tenance and, consequently, highly sensor- and telemetry-redundant ship. The obvious answer is optical fiber telemetry and fiber optic sensors. In this paper we will review the status of several of the prominent elements facilitating shipboard fiber optic systems. In addition, known problems of shipboard applications will be noted and subsequent challenges, thus opportunities, will be presented to the fiber optics commmunity.
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