Zonal Design offers the Naval Architect a design process for implementing the DAU Systems Engineering Process in a deliberate manner. Zonal Design enables the linking of concept capability requirements to design solutions in a traceable manner not currently possible in early stage design. Zonal Survivability can be designed into the concept in a simpler and less costly, open-loop design process, than the current closed-loop design, analyze, fix process currently used. Zonal Design also offers the naval architect the opportunity to reduce design complexity and reduce the Non-recurring engineering effort in later stages of design.