Abstract: As asymmetric threats arise at sea, rapid response capability has gradually become one of the most important considerations in the efficiency of warships. Warships can use more flexible configurations of sub-systems to accomplish missions using Open Architecture and modular components. Due to the decoupling of warship platforms and sub-systems, modular software/hardware can be reused across multiple classes of warships, thereby effectively reducing the building costs, system integration, maintenance and testing of warships. This paper explores ways to build a 'flexible ship' in such aspects as design, manufacturing, procurement and combat process, and several quantitative analytical methods are also proposed.