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

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

#321

Post by kragen »

hintymad wrote: post #145
jahewson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

right, the usa 80 years ago is china today

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

#322

Post by kragen »

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…

while i agree about the importance of precision, a 3-d printed drone from a ukrainian basement workshop also hits exactly where you want it, to the point that the problem is finding out what you want

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

#323

Post by kragen »

throwup238 wrote: post #213
bruce511 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is zero chance of China invading the US or vice versa. But this issue isn't about a ground war in either place, it's about a war in some 3rd place. It's not about "home country". The US doesn't need carrier groups to defend home country. It needs them to project power into other parts of the world. Take Taiwan. If China invades there that represents a significant dilemma for the US. On balance, they'll likely m…

> There is zero chance of China invading the US or vice versa. But this issue isn't about a ground war in either place, it's about a war in some 3rd place. Agreed > It needs them to project power into other parts of the world. China can barely project power in its own backyard while the US has nearly a century of experience projecting around the world, with eleven carrier groups to China's two. Assuming they all get…

destroying taiwan would permanently cripple the supply chain for the us, japanese, and australian military. in iraq and armenia we saw what happens when a conventional industrial-age military banking on tonnage of explosives faces off against one with precision-guided weaponry, and since your comment we've seen it again in lebanon

circumstantial evidence suggests that, like the usa, china has extensive military presence in western hemisphere telephony and networking equipment

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

#324

Post by shiroiushi »

daveguy wrote: post #317
shiroiushi wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's just not true. According to the 1st paragraph of the linked article, it is. >As long as you are able to get an original ticket and not a resold one. That's pretty useless if they all get bought up by resellers.

It is literally false. The original tickets are nowhere close to that expensive and they do a lottery system with more verification now so that more fans get the tickets. I'm not defending Ticketmaster (they are awful and should be regulated), but original tickets just don't cost that much. Have you ever purchased Taylor Swift tickets? I have twice. Both times at original ticket prices.

>but original tickets just don't cost that much.

I'm not talking about original ticket prices, but rather the prices that normal people actually pay. According to the article, it's huge because of scalpers. Maybe that isn't true in your experience, but it seems to be true for enough people that they're writing articles complaining about this.

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

#325

Post by ruthmarx »

roenxi wrote: post #207
Sakos wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US shipyards and military production are extremely low on any number of metrics. 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. At some point, you do need constant production of enough munitions, doesn't matter how smart or precise tho…

> 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…

> It doesn't seem plausible that the US can fight a long sustained war.

It wouldn't be sustained. The US would cripple China very quickly to ensure it wouldn't be.

> One of the big surprises out of the Ukraine war is that the US isn't in a position where it can easily bully Russia.

How do you come to that conclusion?

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

#326

Post by ruthmarx »

phil21 wrote: post #196
Sakos wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US shipyards and military production are extremely low on any number of metrics. 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. At some point, you do need constant production of enough munitions, doesn't matter how smart or precise tho…

> 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…

> It's uncomfortable to call out an obvious truth: We couldn't even compare.

Funny, I don't see China as having any real chance in a hypothetical war. Numbers aren't everything.

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

#327

Post by kinjba11 »

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.

This seems to be endemic to civilization period. Nobody pays attention until the last one breaks, and by then nobody knows how it's done anymore. I'm reminded of the fleet of ships that repairs undersea data cables, which are looking at aging staffing issues.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40075402 https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea...

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

#328

Post by pjietr »

impossiblefork wrote: post #291
ca_tech wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, he says 'What do they get. Well, in exchange, we agree to integrate our ice breaking supply chains so that they are interoperable at every stage of production', but that doesn't actually benefit Finland Furthermore, suppose that it actually was something substantial, some kind of deal that NATO icebreakers are to be made by the US, Canada or Finland, then you screw the Aker group in Norway, who also make icebrea…

We Finns can meet you somewhere halway there?

"US: cost $800-$900 million per ship ($1.1-$1.3 billion in 2024 dollars) FIN: Finnish shipyard can build a heavy icebreaker for just a few hundred million dollars"

Bill North Americans for $500-600 million per ship? Can give some discount if significant amount of these projections indeed gets built

ODD LOTS: "And our best estimate is that the global total global demand for ice breakers over the next decade from allies and partners is between seventy and ninety vessels."

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