This symposium will address understanding, defining, specifying and procuring shipboard systems and their controls to successfully and affordably integrate critical marine and weapons systems to meet operational requirements.  Implementing appropriate control technologies is one of the greatest hurdles we face in the development of an electric warship.  Some of the impediments to surmounting this hurdle are the historical breach between marine and weapons engineering at all stages of a ship's life cycle as well as a lack of controls open architecture to enable a flexible integration of heterogeneous systems, technical and business models.  As we move to a more automated reconfigurable ship with a highly flexible mission profile, we must address significant control interface issues as well as component level intelligence. To achieve the high level of performance projected for our technologically advanced future platforms such as the CG(X), LPD(X), and DDG 1000, it will be important to implement a scalable, intelligent, distributed control strategy where the behavior of individual electric plant and weapon's subsystems and devices can adapt to the changing needs of the ship in a cohesive, integrated manner.  There will likely be a heterogeneous mix of autonomous, but interconnected subsystems developed by multiple vendors that will evolve over the life of the warship.  Managing the integration of these complex systems will require advances both in technical architectures as well as acquisition approaches.  Significant understanding of the motivations, priorities, steps and subtleties of implementing and assessing a total ship engineering management approach exist in the conventional wisdom of today's Navy officers and crews. This symposium will allow Navy personnel to share this wisdom with academic, industry and government researchers.  This Symposium will also provide twofold learning for industry partners to exhibit their technological advantages and to learn from each other requirements for fully scalable and integrated shipboard automation architecture. Also, these researchers will share with Navy personnel and their colleagues the latest state-of-the-art developments in shipboard control systems, total ship systems engineering, autonomous reconfiguration and automated survivability. We will hear of the latest US Navy shipbuilding progress, such as the USS ZUMWALT (DDG 1000). We will also try to have a strong international or academic program highlighting electric ship programs.