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Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

construction-physics.com

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Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#11

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

0xffff2 wrote: post #3

An interesting summary, but I don't think the article really answered the headline. In particular, I'm left wondering which is the bigger problem: Is it that the US ship builders aren't competent and have turned what should have been a fairly straightforward modification of an existing design into a huge boondoggle, or is it that the government requirements are poorly thought out and/or overly ambitious, resulting in…

> Put another way, are we spending all this time and money to fail at simply building a ship that is functionally identical to one of these ~$300m Finnish ice breakers, or are we claiming we need something more sophisticated?

It sounds like it is the former.

> If and when the ships are completed (currently 2029 for the first vessel at the earliest), they are expected to cost $1.7-1.9 billion apiece[0], roughly four to five times what a comparable ship would cost to build[1] elsewhere.

0: https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-08/60170-Polar-Securit...

1: https://sixtydegreesnorth.substack.com/p/the-silicon-valley-...

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#12

Post by jahewson »

0xffff2 wrote: post #3

An interesting summary, but I don't think the article really answered the headline. In particular, I'm left wondering which is the bigger problem: Is it that the US ship builders aren't competent and have turned what should have been a fairly straightforward modification of an existing design into a huge boondoggle, or is it that the government requirements are poorly thought out and/or overly ambitious, resulting in…

> Is it that the US ship builders aren't competent

Yes, they are woefully uncompetitive. They produce single-digit numbers of commercial oceangoing ships annually, at 2-4x the cost of elsewhere. It’s an industry on life support.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#13

Post by potato3732842 »

0xffff2 wrote: post #3

An interesting summary, but I don't think the article really answered the headline. In particular, I'm left wondering which is the bigger problem: Is it that the US ship builders aren't competent and have turned what should have been a fairly straightforward modification of an existing design into a huge boondoggle, or is it that the government requirements are poorly thought out and/or overly ambitious, resulting in…

Don't forget that RFPs for this sort of thing get massively stuffed with pork so they're doomed to be bloated even regardless of the quality of the contractor who does the implementation.

They love including requirements that all but mandates a specific vendor's product because that vendor is a key employer in the district of some rep's who's vote they need or has a good lobbyist or whatever.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#14

Post by mmooss »

> ... allowing the Coast Guard to buy icebreakers from Finland would likely save over a billion dollars per ship, as well as years of construction time

How about we let Finland build the icebreakers, and we build something we're good at, like fighter planes? Then everyone gets the best and most efficiently built icebreakers and fighter planes, and all for much less money.

There is no [edit: economic] logic to economic nationalism, other than as wealth transfer from taxpayers to a few wealthy people.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#15

Post by ben7799 »

quasse wrote: post #9

> We also see the same cultural issues that we saw with American shipbuilding more broadly. There seems to be a lack of motivation to take maritime issues seriously or treat them as important. This is the meat of the article in my mind. The US has globalized away its maritime industry in general and we now lack the institutional knowledge, infrastructure, and labor force needed to operate even semi-independently on t…

Interesting. I would conjecture that we have the same cultural issues at this point preventing us from building effective passenger rail systems.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#16

Post by mmooss »

epistasis wrote: post #10

> The culprit here isn’t the Jones Act, but another protectionist shipbuilding law that requires Naval and Coast Guard ships to be built in U.S. shipyards. Now this is a surprise! As soon as I read the headline, I thought "Jones Act." When I describe the Jones Act to people, the usual response is "That can't be right," or even "I don't believe you," but these days there's usually another person around that can say "Y…

[dead]

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#17

Post by thijson »

wongarsu wrote: post #5

So in short the US only builds a tiny number of them once every two to three decades, so nobody has any experience. And letting someone with experience build them is out of the question because then it wouldn't be built in the US. This seems like a reoccurring story when talking about anything vaguely infrastructure related in the US.

Seems so, TSMC had issues with keeping costs under control while building their fab in Arizona. The military is having trouble building submarines and ships at the same rate as China is capable of. Nuclear plants are being built way over cost.

I'm reminded of this article which explains why elevators cost so much more here in the USA than the rest of the world:

https://archive.is/u7Bp9

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#19

Post by cyberax »

quasse wrote: post #9

> We also see the same cultural issues that we saw with American shipbuilding more broadly. There seems to be a lack of motivation to take maritime issues seriously or treat them as important. This is the meat of the article in my mind. The US has globalized away its maritime industry in general and we now lack the institutional knowledge, infrastructure, and labor force needed to operate even semi-independently on t…

> The US has globalized away its maritime industry

It hasn't. Jones Act _protects_ the US maritime industry, so it stagnated and died. Nobody wants the US ships unless they have to use them, they're crap compared to ships from other countries.

> and they still can't find builders.

That's because shipyards are basically a defense industry subsidiary. So they receive a fixed amount of orders, and it's known for years in advance. The shipyards are also unionized to hell and back, with VERY cushy contracts. So shipyards can't hire temporary workforce for a given project.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#20

Post by lotsofpulp »

ben7799 wrote: post #15
quasse wrote: post #9

> We also see the same cultural issues that we saw with American shipbuilding more broadly. There seems to be a lack of motivation to take maritime issues seriously or treat them as important. This is the meat of the article in my mind. The US has globalized away its maritime industry in general and we now lack the institutional knowledge, infrastructure, and labor force needed to operate even semi-independently on t…

Interesting. I would conjecture that we have the same cultural issues at this point preventing us from building effective passenger rail systems.

Passenger rail systems require the procurement of immense amounts of very pricey land, or the transfer of ownership of existing rail lines. I don’t see that as a similar cultural issue.

Boat building can be solved by spending money to build boats (and perhaps waiting a couple decades for expertise to be built up).

Using eminent domain or changing the view of the public on land rights is a much higher barrier.

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