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The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

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Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#221

Post by bearjaws »

Tostino wrote: post #218
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you worry about missiles and drones taking out the cargo planes, don't you worry about missiles and drones taking out cargo ships as well?

Ships can easily mount a CWIS or similar to help with a wide range of threats. Not so easy to do the same on a cargo aircraft.

Will CWIS be able to handle drone boats that are submerged except for their cameras and satellite dishes? They are primarily used for cruise missiles.

Watching the Russian fleet "deal with" Ukranian drone boats (aka sink to the bottom of the Ocean) made me realize that most war ships aren't prepared for these encounters.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#222

Post by Hasu »

RobKohr wrote: post #204
fifticon wrote: post #46

You can't get a revolution, but it appears you have managed to get a coup.

A democratic election without using violence to force a result is by definition not a coup. It is ok to not like the result, but don't misappropriate words for it, thus diluting their meaning. Words having concrete meanings are important for reasonable discourse.

Violence is not inherent to the definition of a coup, and Elon Musk, who is not a government official, who has no official status in the government, has taken direct control of the Treasury's payment systems. An unelected billionaire has illegally and unconstitutionally taken control of the United States government.

That is a coup, plain and simple.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#223

Post by Miraste »

pas wrote: post #200
wrfrmers wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the cost of building the house. Utilities and infrastructure (and the taxes to pay for it all) add up. Now, if you were to build smaller, densely, and close enough to amenities that residents could walk or bike to their daily activities, or to public transit that can take you farther away, you save a significant amount on initial AND recurring costs. And what's better, people WANT that! Or, a least, the…

Market prices is not the problem. The problem is getting these bigger projects through permitting is. The cost savings are lost in litigation. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/market-rate-housing-will-make-...

Charitably, that's a very flawed blog post. Studies of housing affordability in Finland should not be used to make points about America. Finland has a number of legal protections that shield its citizens from the rampant price-fixing, collusion, investor-oriented building, and other predations of the American market.

That's not to say housing construction regulation isn't a problem. It is, but two things can be problems at the same time.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#224

Post by tivert »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #146
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"insulate the US shipbuilding industry from international competition, leading to them resting on their laurels" This is what I don't get. The Jones Act is about keeping ship building at home, in the US. So protective. By locking out foreign competition. It's a 'protective' law, to isolate and protect US industry. How will opening the US to buy and operate foreign ships, somehow make the US build more US ships? Look…

Let’s turn it around. How does keeping the Jones Act ensure a competitive shipbuilding industry in the US? We could easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on. But blocking competition just keeps the market uncompetitive. We have no problem with subsidizing farmers and roads so why not shipbuilders if it keeps our navy competitive?

> Let’s turn it around. How does keeping the Jones Act ensure a competitive shipbuilding industry in the US? We could easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on. But blocking competition just keeps the market uncompetitive.

Because the US can't "easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on." It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that. Even if you could manage to get a program like that passed, there's a large chance it'd get cut in 10 years by some libertarian to pay for yet another tax cut.

> We have no problem with subsidizing farmers and roads so why not shipbuilders if it keeps our navy competitive?

That's only because of how the Constitution apportions senators and the electoral college. Farmers are spread out in a way that gives them disproportionate political power.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#225

Post by FpUser »

L_Rahman wrote: post #212
jabl wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems an unintended side effect of the Jones act was to insulate the US shipbuilding industry from international competition, leading to them resting on their laurels while the rest of the industry worked hard to improve productivity (see Japan, South Korea, and lately China). Which makes it even harder to repeal, since with a repeal of the Jones act the wildly noncompetitive (civilian) US shipbuilding industry wo…

We are all ignoring the obvious solution to this. One of the benefits of being a global hegemon is having close allies who are good at things we are not. Intel fell behind on semiconductors and now Phoenix is turning into an outlying suburb of Taipei while the children of TSMC engineers are making the local school district look like magicians. All the US has to do is subsidize one of the Korean heavy conglomerates, p…

>"Intel fell behind on semiconductors and now Phoenix is turning into an outlying suburb of Taipei while the children of TSMC engineers are making the local school district look like magicians."

So after a while Taiwan is no longer needed and China can just take it. I am curious if Taiwan's government cares about this potential course of events?

>"All the US has to do is subsidize one of the Korean heavy conglomerates, probably Hyundai, and get them to start pumping out cargo boats out of say Louisiana or Georgia with the promise of a government buyer."

Again you think that Korea would not care about moving their strategic industries somewhere else?

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#226

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

vuurmot wrote: post #48
suraci wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we ever did get in a war with them is that normal to think like this? do most americans think like this?

looking at this from the other side of the world, it feels like americans are so insecure, as if they are constantly frightened

That's because we're constantly frightened. They work pretty hard to keep us that way.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#227

Post by throw0101c »

jabl wrote: post #129
throw0101c wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago The US used to subsidize the salaries of US merchant marines on ships (US salaries are higher than Filipino ones) so that there would be a trained population, but that was stopped in the 1980s because subsidies are bad, so…

It seems an unintended side effect of the Jones act was to insulate the US shipbuilding industry from international competition, leading to them resting on their laurels while the rest of the industry worked hard to improve productivity (see Japan, South Korea, and lately China). Which makes it even harder to repeal, since with a repeal of the Jones act the wildly noncompetitive (civilian) US shipbuilding industry wo…

> But there are shipyards in other high-income countries e.g. in Europe […]

China is #1, but Korea is #2, and Japan is #3:

* https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-dominate-global-s...

Is Japan a low-wage country?

Given that the US shipyards are 'full' with US Navy work, ordering a bunch of merchant marine ships from our allies would boost them and give us trust-worthy vessels.

While civilian-like designs are built there, encourage those same allies to build US-stationed shipyards and order a number of military-oriented designs to help boost domestic knowledge:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Sealift_Command

Note: building one of a design is not good, and two is probably just as bad. If you're going to order ships, putting in an order of >6 is the only way to get economies of scale.

Another option would be to order civilian-like designs with a 'basic' shell, and then do retrofitting for military needs domestically.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#228

Post by throw0101c »

tivert wrote: post #224
throwaway173738 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s turn it around. How does keeping the Jones Act ensure a competitive shipbuilding industry in the US? We could easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on. But blocking competition just keeps the market uncompetitive. We have no problem with subsidizing farmers and roads so why not shipbuilders if it keeps our navy competitive?

> Let’s turn it around. How does keeping the Jones Act ensure a competitive shipbuilding industry in the US? We could easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on. But blocking competition just keeps the market uncompetitive. Because the US can't "easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on." It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that. Even if you could…

> It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that.

Just slap a "national security" label on it. semi-/s

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#229

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

themaninthedark wrote: post #169
grey-area wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is now in charge of the US and admires Xi and his dictatorship. He’ll find an excuse not to intervene or even better will pay peacemaker and trumpet how his intervention saved millions of lives and stopped a war by capitulating to China and refusing Taiwan aid. As he is doing in Ukraine. Since Trump is in I’d expect invasion later this year or next. After invasion the people of Taiwan won’t be choosing anything…

I get that it is easy to say that Trump admires dictators, he is such great friends with them, they have compromising information on him and he will allow them to do whatever they want, however, he was president before and during that time China did not invade Taiwan. Also during that time; Russia did not invade Ukraine.

They did take Hong Kong during that time. It would've been pretty easy to point out that they were violating their agreements there, but he kept his mouth shut so they would sign his trade agreement. It's pretty clear who is wearing the pants in that relationship.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#230

Post by greedo »

deltarholamda wrote: post #186
bluGill wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

close ship on ship battle is dead but large ships are needed for large long range weapons that can hit opposing targets that cannot be seen. a wwi battleship could ignore a small drone of today - a much larger system is needed to sink a ship.

Can a large ship, or any ship, intercept a hypersonic missile? Because that's the reality of today.

Yes. Patriot has intercepted Kinzals in Ukraine (and older versions of Patriot at that), so the tech is well established. SM3/SM6 missiles on Aegis equipped ships can defend themselves against hypersonic missiles.
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