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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

#301

Post by bruce511 »

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"?

I didn't mean it to be tasteless, and it wasn't personal against Finland.

My point was that "internal spending" and "external spending " are not (economically the same thing. Obviously, Finland wants to export - tests a given - but the price tag of a Finnish ship and a US ship are not the same unit.

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

#302

Post by bruce511 »

matips wrote: post #247
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". You can make a deal that US buy icebreaker for 300M from Finland and Finns buy weapons from US for 300M. They need it because of Russia and you boosts US economy in other areas.

And foreign deals are often set up this way.... if this can be arranged. It's seldom that straightforward though.

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

#303

Post by maxglute »

hintymad wrote: post #297
roenxi wrote: post #207

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 Is it? What is the theory that the US could keep up with China? That would be the US vs the globe's industrial superpower with an arguably larger real economy. It doesn't seem plausible that the US can fight a long sustained war. The plan as far as I can…

> That would be the US vs the globe's industrial superpower with an arguably larger real economy Wouldn't it be sad if this were true? Since when US was no longer a "industrial superpower"? Just 25 years ago, Chinese government officials were astound by how wealthy and advanced the US was when they visited the US. They wrote articles after articles to reflect why China was so behind, yet now China is the "globe's ind…

> China is the "globe's industrial superpower

>isn't it sad for the US to be behind

Or perhaps it was just inevitable for PRC, also a continental sized land power with 4x population to be ahead once they got shit together. Comparing US industrial stagnation in US lens frequently fails to grasp/comprehend that PRC industrialization at PRC scale brought forth another "weight-class" of industrial output. Last year, PRC ship building launched roughly same amount of tonnage as entire 5year US WW2 ship building program. IMO many people think US industry declined from 10 to 5, and maybe whole of system effort can bring in back to 10. Meanwhile PRC didn't just turn the industrial output dial to 11, it turned it to 20, beyond what US was ever capable of, and likely will be capable of. Same way US didn't so much leave British Empire behind in the industrial race as UK was never capable of running better than a 7 minute mile while US stalled at 5 minute mile (and now de-trained into a 6 minute mile), meanwhile PRC is now running a 3.5 minute mile. IMO ultimately, not about sadness but being realisitic about systemtic potential. Maybe US can AI/automate their way to overcome human capita disadvantage, but PRC playing that game too.

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

#304

Post by Qwertious »

arthurjj wrote: post #125
ronjakoi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you, shipyards here in Finland are just as, if not more, unionized.

This is a common communication problem between Americans and Europeans where we're using the same word to mean two different types of organization. In the US you should replace "union" with "cartel, likely criminal" eg the boilermakers "A federal grand jury in Kansas returned an indictment yesterday charging seven defendants, including five current and former high-level officers of the International Brotherhood of Bo…

$20M is small potatoes for a $300M ship that's now costing in the billions.

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

#305

Post by jjk166 »

stackskipton wrote: post #280
45HCPW wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US merchant fleet has already gone poof. According to Wikipedia "As of 31 December 2016, the United States merchant fleet had 175 privately owned, oceangoing, self-propelled vessels of 1,000 gross register tons and above that carry cargo from port to port. " The list is likely even shorter today.

Jones Act is what is keeping that tiny fleet alive on life support. It would likely approach ZERO outside the Great Lakes without the act. Jones Act is not what killed the US Merchant Marine Fleet. Globalization is what killed it.

You see an emaciated man being fed a few grains of rice per day, someone says to stop the policy of feeding the man only a few grains of rice per day, and you argue "we can't stop feeding him these few grains of rice per day, they are the only thing keeping him alive!"

The Jones Act made sense when it was implemented in the 1920s while America was the world's leading ship builder, the shipping industry was heavily subsidized, and there was no alternative to shipping things by water. But after the subsidies stopped, and shipbuilding in america started to lose its competitiveness, and we built a massive interstate highway system that made transport by truck economical, the Jones Act proved far too restrictive. The more expensive domestic water shipping got, the less demand there was for ships, the less demand there was for ships, the more it cost to build ships domestically, the more it cost to build ships domestically, the more expensive domestic water shipping got.

There are alternative and better ways to keep the us merchant fleet alive, and even make it thrive, than keeping the current status quo which is obviously not working.

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

#306

Post by jjk166 »

vkou wrote: post #85
ElevenLathe wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument among the anti-Jones contingent is that our only real hope of having a globally competitive shipbuilding industry is to repeal it and all the other things preventing our shipyards and merchant marine from having incentive to compete globally. As it is, there is a slow trickle of work for domestic shipyards that is based solely on policy (ships that legally HAVE to be US-made, whether for Jones Ac…

More realistically without the Jones act, ships wouldn't be built or operated by the US at all. International vendors can do this cheaper. You'd instead see all domestic shipping be entirely dependant on third-party international operators paying third-world wages to third-world crews, and you'd have next to zero recourse against them if they, say, run one of their ships into a bridge, or spill a few million litres o…

> you'd have next to zero recourse against them if they, say, run one of their ships into a bridge

You know that the Jones Act only applies to domestic shipping, right? So our ports are still full of ships dependent on third-party international operators paying third-world wages to third -world crews who occasionally run their ships into a bridge.

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

#307

Post by Qwertious »

stackskipton wrote: post #280
45HCPW wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US merchant fleet has already gone poof. According to Wikipedia "As of 31 December 2016, the United States merchant fleet had 175 privately owned, oceangoing, self-propelled vessels of 1,000 gross register tons and above that carry cargo from port to port. " The list is likely even shorter today.

Jones Act is what is keeping that tiny fleet alive on life support. It would likely approach ZERO outside the Great Lakes without the act. Jones Act is not what killed the US Merchant Marine Fleet. Globalization is what killed it.

>Jones Act is not what killed the US Merchant Marine Fleet. Globalization is what killed it.

"Protectionism isn't what killed the US industry. Having any overseas competition whatsoever is what killed the US industry." This is farcical.

If globalisation is when the market lacks protectionism and as a result the manufacturing all moves to cheaper shores, then this was not globalisation by dint of US shipbuilding having abundant protectionism.

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

#308

Post by skinkestek »

dgroshev wrote: post #293
skinkestek wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Note that FPV drones in Ukraine are not squad-level, there are separate drone units (at the very least 2 operators, at least 1 explosives guy because arming drones with makeshift explosives is not trivial and super risky, plus cover). Plus they are supplied literally on the back of a minivan in cardboard boxes because they only need to survive one way trip over a couple hundred km, the US needs to supply their units…

I don't think I wrote FPV, one way attack or kamikaze drone although I can understand why you interpreted it that way that I wrote home built (this was a mistake on my side, I was thinking about the commercial drones they use) and expendable (this doesn't mean attack drones, only that it is cheap enough that one doesn't hesitate too long to use it and don't try to recover it).

These surveillance drones can absolutely be used at the squad level.

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

#309

Post by throwaway48476 »

bluGill wrote: post #282
throwaway48476 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are alternatives to GPS but they are expensive. While the arms race is normal the issue is the penny hasn't dropped yet and no one wants to admit their weapons are now obsolete.

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

#310

Post by cyberax »

vlovich123 wrote: post #241
cyberax wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For what it’s worth American workers as a whole make ~20x what Turkish workers do. It's about 7x. > 20x discrepancy in salaries Not salaries. The end-product costs.

Average national salary in the US $60k [1] vs 5k for turkey so closer to 11-12x (the coasts typically pay closer to 70k). So at most unions are costing US built ships to be twice as expensive due to unions and overall higher US wages are responsible for the price difference - difficult to compete on price with people that are willing to work for 1/10th your wage unless you can automate significantly more than them. […

I looked up the salary for qualified machinists in both countries, not the average.
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