251–260 of 328 posts
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That is what is being done with the next class of US Navy frigates [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation-class_frigate
Which itself is turning into a bit of a disaster in terms of how different they are to the original Italian design...
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> 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.
Canada has the same problem with building icebreakers. The problem with icebreakers capable of dealing with multi-year ice is that they're a very expensive and specialized kind of ship that's hard to construct, but also the sort of ship that has a very long lifetime. Only a few governments in the world have any need of such ships, and they typically only need a few in the span of many decades. By the time Canada got…
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> 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.
Curious why the US does not think this is a big problem. I mean, look at the US 80 years ago. The US easily out produced the Axis. We could produce faster and cheaper. There's really no excuse that the cost of making canon shells is 10x higher than Russia. Isn't being able to manufacturing cheaply the signature of a highly developed society? Besides, expertise is not just volumes of blueprints, right? We can only kee…
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Canada has the same problem with building icebreakers. The problem with icebreakers capable of dealing with multi-year ice is that they're a very expensive and specialized kind of ship that's hard to construct, but also the sort of ship that has a very long lifetime. Only a few governments in the world have any need of such ships, and they typically only need a few in the span of many decades. By the time Canada got…
Finland is part of NATO. The US and Canada should collaborate with it too. Sharing knowledge is a perfect way for European NATO allies to carry more of the collective defense burden.
Including a couple of Nuclear ones (they fitted the nuclear engine themselves):
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Canada has the same problem with building icebreakers. The problem with icebreakers capable of dealing with multi-year ice is that they're a very expensive and specialized kind of ship that's hard to construct, but also the sort of ship that has a very long lifetime. Only a few governments in the world have any need of such ships, and they typically only need a few in the span of many decades. By the time Canada got…
Finland is part of NATO. The US and Canada should collaborate with it too. Sharing knowledge is a perfect way for European NATO allies to carry more of the collective defense burden.
It seems more like a way taking over the industry from the Finns.
Obviously there may be specifics of the deal that makes it acceptable, but the vague text I see seems just terrible for the Finns.
I suppose it might be accepted because of the Canadian ownership of the shipyard in question.
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Finland is part of NATO. The US and Canada should collaborate with it too. Sharing knowledge is a perfect way for European NATO allies to carry more of the collective defense burden.
It's an interesting side note that in the 80's the Soviet Union, despite having a large icebreaking ship building capabilities, also bought icebreakers from Finland (then not a member of NATO) Including a couple of Nuclear ones (they fitted the nuclear engine themselves): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaygach_(1989_icebreaker)
I guess that aside from Alaska, the US doesn't have to deal with a lot of sea ice and isn't that dependent on arctic shipping routes. For Russia that's very different. The sea near St Petersburg can freeze over and Murmansk is also hard to reach in winter. And with Svebastopol and the black see fleet out of action, those would be strategically important for Russia. And they rely on the northern arctic route for trade with China as well.
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What you’re missing is that our ability to move stuff around has already deteriorated to almost nil, precisely due to Jones Act and shipbuilding workforce unionization. We already cannot build vessels we need at quantities we need. This is already reality today. Repealing Jones Act cannot make our situation much worse. It can, however, make us much better off, by for example allowing US companies to buy foreign ships…
I think there could be some discussion of modify the Jones Act to allow non US made ships to be use in Merchant Fleet. However, key provision of Jones Act around only US flagged ships may transport two US ports. If you eliminate that, forget it, US Merchant Marine fleet will go poof . Since it's a global industry, workers from other countries are obviously much cheaper than any US salaries.
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The hypothetical war in Taiwan would likely be almost entirely naval/aerial so yeah the question is if US has enough political will. Don’t think artillery shells will be a huge factor and even on paper the Chinese navy (and probably the air force) doesn’t even come even remotely close to US (yet). Actual invasions of Japan and Australia are even harder to imagine. How would that even work? And why?
Artillery and particularly guided artillery like Excaliber rounds are highly effective at resisting landings. In the most recent US wargame, China succeeded in occupying parts of Taiwan which would make artillery even more important — as attacks from the mountain regions towards Chinese occupation would keep them from establishing a secure foothold.
To be fair NATO wasn’t taking really taking defense that seriously back and maybe they had a point, although considering what happened in Ukraine that seem like a very unlikely outcome (unless Britain/France/Germany decided to stay out and not risk their air forces ..)
I guess overestimating your opponents is usually better than the opposite. OTH had Britain/France not made that mistake in the 30s much of WW2 could have been prevented.
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It's an interesting side note that in the 80's the Soviet Union, despite having a large icebreaking ship building capabilities, also bought icebreakers from Finland (then not a member of NATO) Including a couple of Nuclear ones (they fitted the nuclear engine themselves): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaygach_(1989_icebreaker)
When I was living in Helsinki, there were two huge icebreakers there whose main job it was to keep the baltic see open for the Russians. I think that probably changed a bit since they joined NATO. I guess that aside from Alaska, the US doesn't have to deal with a lot of sea ice and isn't that dependent on arctic shipping routes. For Russia that's very different. The sea near St Petersburg can freeze over and Murmansk…