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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

#281

Post by throwaway48476 »

bluGill wrote: post #266
hintymad wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We use mostly guided munitions dropped from planes and rockets fired from the ground, whereas Russian doctrine has always focused on artillery. Thanks for the specifics. I don't know about guided munitions, but I'd imagine a million dollar a rocket will be quite expensive for a prolonged war. Also, the US debuted a killer zone, Rogue 1, a few months ago, and it cost about $94K. $94K! I'm sure the drone is more adva…

A million dollar rocket is expensive, but it hits exactly where you want it and so you need far less of them. Artillery is a lot cheaper but also much harder to get exactly where you want it and so you end up using far more of it. Note that Russia and the US have both guided misstles and artillery. Both have value in different situations. They both have their reasons for their preference, but that is more about how t…

Except the effectiveness of precision fires is now closer to 50% in a GPS denied environment. Now it's both expensive and inprecise.

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

#282

Post by bluGill »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #281
bluGill wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A million dollar rocket is expensive, but it hits exactly where you want it and so you need far less of them. Artillery is a lot cheaper but also much harder to get exactly where you want it and so you end up using far more of it. Note that Russia and the US have both guided misstles and artillery. Both have value in different situations. They both have their reasons for their preference, but that is more about how t…

Except the effectiveness of precision fires is now closer to 50% in a GPS denied environment. Now it's both expensive and inprecise.

Every hear the term "arms race". This is a constant in history. There precision weapons that don't use GPS. There are various ways to evade GPS denial (I don't know how effective they are). We will constantly be in a race of out doing each other.

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

#283

Post by wakawaka28 »

ywvcbk wrote: post #220
wakawaka28 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor is much more expensive in the US than elsewhere. That is the overwhelming burden in every industry. We need protectionist laws to guarantee that we can manufacture what we must have for strategic reasons, at minimum.

I’m not sure labor costs could explain the difference the supposedly 5x difference in cost between Finland and the US. Labor is only a fraction of the overall cost and the difference is not that huge (e.g. average wage is $63k vs $50k). It’s more likely that US workers (in this sector) expect to get paid $100k to produce $20k of value (relative to other countries)

Of course I'm not talking about averages. Average fast food workers make as much as engineers in some other countries. I'm not sure wages at the low-skill end are much lower in Europe, but certainly engineers seem to be paid less there. I assume that is similar across skilled professions. Comparing the US to Asia, yes the wage differences are across the board.

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

#284

Post by wakawaka28 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #204
wakawaka28 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor is much more expensive in the US than elsewhere. That is the overwhelming burden in every industry. We need protectionist laws to guarantee that we can manufacture what we must have for strategic reasons, at minimum.

> Labor is much more expensive in the US than elsewhere. That is the overwhelming burden in every industry This is true. But it’s not the root cause for our shipbuilding problems. Our dockworkers and shipbuilders are uniquely inefficient.

Maybe our dockworkers and shipbuilders are dragging to extend contracts that they only got due to protectionist laws to begin with. If they had more work to do and more experience, they might become more efficient.

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

#285

Post by skinkestek »

bostik wrote: post #215
bruce511 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely though isn't the same as likely. If I'm going to buy an icebreaker from a foreign supplier, sure the US is in the market, but they're still more expensive and take longer than Finland. To get good at something, good enough that you're competitive on the world stage, you need to be building lots, iterating, getting feedback and so on. The US coast guard doesn't have the need to kick-start that sort of scal…

> But the headline number is somewhat irrelevant. 300m sent to Finland is "gone forever". Even with the quotes, as a Finn I find this statement rather tasteless. Or would you also claim that cross-border trade with more nearby nations is "money gone forever"?

Some people seems to be willing to spend significantly more if it means no one else makes a profit from it.

On a national level I understand the interest to keep investments within country borders.

For a random person or company I don't get it (except for very specific cases like voting with our wallets against dictatorships like China).

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

#286

Post by skinkestek »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #217
hintymad wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We use mostly guided munitions dropped from planes and rockets fired from the ground, whereas Russian doctrine has always focused on artillery. Thanks for the specifics. I don't know about guided munitions, but I'd imagine a million dollar a rocket will be quite expensive for a prolonged war. Also, the US debuted a killer zone, Rogue 1, a few months ago, and it cost about $94K. $94K! I'm sure the drone is more adva…

drone is an incredibly broad category and military ones have really good reasons for sometimes costing a ton more. the biggest reason is the need to deal with adversarial input. dealing with GPS spoofing, properly encrypted and jamming resistant spoofing, not leaking the location of the operator, etc all are really complicated requirements that need expensive mitigation (and worse, prevent you from using commercial c…

> drone is an incredibly broad category and military ones have really good reasons for sometimes costing a ton more.

After following the development of drones in Ukraine since 2022 and also listening to people familiar with the US army, I also think there are some not so good ones, one particular nasty one being scope creep.

Recently heard about a US effort to create home built expendable drones for use at the squad level like the ones Ukrainians use and the result was too heavy and a lot more expensive (some of it thanks to the demand that everything be produced in a US controlled supply chain) but also as a result of good old fashioned scope creep.

And this is nothing new: AFAIK there is an old British military saying something like "an elephant is what a mouse would be if specified by a military procurement committee".

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

#287

Post by ca_tech »

impossiblefork wrote: post #256
ChiMan wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does it really make sense for Finnish shipyards to share knowledge of icebreaking when there the released text above discusses things such as the US and Canada selling icebreakers to third parties? 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 acc…

It is a case of economic security. US National Security Advisor Daleep Singh spoke about this on the Odd Lots podcast a month ago. The goal is an integrated supply chain across all three countries, and an end result of marketing the ice breaker capacity to other allies.

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/odd-lots/how-the-white-...

Transcript Notes at 00:17:51

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

#288

Post by [deleted] »

throwup238 wrote: post #205
phil21 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's unclear even now whether the US has enough stockpiles and enough production of modern munitions to maintain an active war against a peer adversary like China with such massive production capacity and such a massive population. I don't think it's unclear at all. It's uncomfortable to call out an obvious truth: We couldn't even compare. The only hope we have is basically economic mutually assured destruction. If…

> If it comes to a hot war, it better be over (without going nuclear) within weeks or at most single digit months or it's more or less over. At least from where I'm standing. Why? There is essentially zero chance that China can mount an invasion of the mainland US or even strike at its heartland enough to disrupt an industrial ramp up, even if it takes a decade (which it won't). The US can literally wait out anyone e…

[deleted]

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

#289

Post by ImJamal »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #257
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The US Navy will send ships in the Arctic Ocean past Alaska. It tends to be more common for submarines to be there, but surface ships do go there on occasion.

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

#290

Post by silexia »

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…

Unions in the US make for very high costs and long production schedules.
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