Naval ship concept design is very much an “adhoc” process. Selection of design concepts for assessment is guided primarily by experience, design lanes, rules-of-thumb, preference and imagination. Objective attributes are not adequately synthesized or presented to support efficient and effective decisions. Attributes are often qualitative, inconsistent, and not provided to design engineers in a format they can use. The design space is very large, non-linear, discontinuous, and bounded by a variety of constraints and thresholds. These problems make a structured search of design space difficult. Without a structured search, there is no rational way to measure the optimality of selected concepts relative to the millions of other concepts that have not been considered or assessed. Responsible decisions cannot be made without this information and perspective.