Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

usni.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 469 posts

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#231

Post by spacemanspiff01 »

lupusreal wrote: post #90
jonnybgood wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way the US will not respond militarily is if Taiwan chooses unification. By all accounts, Taiwan will not choose that. The US military has not been strategically shifting to the Indo-Pacific for more than 10 years now for no reason.

If China acted quickly in disabling American military assets in the region, it is conceivably possible that Taiwanese people could be demoralized and surrender to the PRC before America has a chance to muster more forces to the region. Even if this definitely wouldn't be possible, it's still possible that the PRC thinks otherwise and will try it, as Japan once did.

The counter to this is that it might make more sense for China to _not_ attack the United States with the anticipation that they sit it out. China attacking US forces/ naval bases makes it much harder for a president to sit back and say not our problem/ focus on economic sanctions.

Imagine if Russia started the invasion of Ukraine by bombing polish railways, so that the Ukrainians would not be able to get supplies/resources from the EU. I would think that the EU/Nato response to that would be much more severe than what happened in reality.

While Guam might be considered different, as most Americans cannot place it on a map and it is on the other side of the world, seeing caskets of all the US troops dying makes it pretty hard to politically shrug off as not our problem.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#232

Post by wongarsu »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #117
p00dles wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All kinds of people from all kinds of places read HN, so maybe better to use more general language - referring to “Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than _ours_”

>maybe better to use more general language Unless a visitor is unaware that this is a US website, then it would actually help be more informative than otherwise. And if a visitor is already aware, what difference does it make?

I had no issue understanding it and didn't even realize.

Not because this website happens to be operated by a US company, but because of US defaultism. If on the internet somebody forgets that other countries exist or that people from other nationalities might be involved, they are American. Occasionally somebody complains how non-inclusive it is, but for the most part we all ignore it

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#233

Post by hindsightbias »

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #139
briandear wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9-11 is a counter example. Asymmetric warfare is a constant threat.

A one-off terrorist attack (one that required years of planning) isn't a war, and cannot scale to a war.

It was enough for us to work with, invade a few countries and spend a few trillion.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#234

Post by greedo »

jabl wrote: post #116
nickff wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jeune ecole thought that torpedoes and small torpedo boats would doom battleships; they were wrong. People thought SAMs would end bombers, and anti-tank missiles would end tanks. There’s always a new weapon, but it doesn’t mean the old ones are obsolete.

Not always, but sometimes it does. Cavalry charges aren't a thing anymore, for instance.

The idea of a cavalry charge is nonsense. Rarely done, and mostly a relic of cinema. The Polish cavalry actually performed quite well during WW2 despite being tarnished as outdated.

The roles of a "cavalry" unit are reconnaissance/scouting, raiding, pursuit. Whether they're on horseback or mounted in M2/M3s doesn't matter. Today the cavalry role still persists in most large militaries because the fog of war requires it.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#235

Post by wrfrmers »

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-...

Without reading your link: this is a problem across new and existing builds, so it can't be an issue wih permitting. Housing cost growth has outpaced wage growth for decades. We are reaching an inflection point of unaffordability (unequally distributed geographically, of course). The problem is that market rates must support a number of (often unnecessary or inflated) concerns, including but not limited to permitting and litigation. Profit for a rotating cast of securitized mortgage holders is another major one. Insolvent municipalities that can't see property taxes fall is another.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#236

Post by spacemanspiff01 »

themaninthedark wrote: post #184
Animats wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The Jones Act was supposed to help American shipbuilding. It's a requirement that vessels which operate between US ports must be made in the US, crewed by the US, and flagged to the US. It didn't help much, but that was the plan. China's shipbuilding industry is so big that their aircraft carriers are being constructed by shipyards that make large cargo ships. Aerial photos show shipyards with drydocks full of c…

There is a group of people who are convinced that the Jones Act is bad, either they have been mislead or another reason. From that, there is a shortcut to the reasoning that occurs: Intercostal shipping is expensive : Jones Act's fault Can't build ships fast enough : Jones Act's fault Ships are expensive ; Jones Act's fault The things that the Jones Act mandates are that: Shipping between American ports must be done…

My impression was that most opposition to the jones act was that it has not really worked, and as a side effect drastically reduced the intra-us shipping industry.

Without the jones act, we would not have a ship building boom, but we probably would have more intra-US shipping via ship/rivers/etc.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#238

Post by missedthecue »

peepeepoopoo105 wrote: post #6

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, but now Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than ours because of their success in civilian shipbuilding. The proposed measures in this aricle are too little too late. The only logical course of action at…

The Jones Act has nothing to do with shipbuilding. Repealing it would make it cheaper to send goods to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. It would not make domestic shipyards more competitive.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#239

Post by pfdietz »

eunos wrote: post #202
peepeepoopoo105 wrote: post #6

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, but now Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than ours because of their success in civilian shipbuilding. The proposed measures in this aricle are too little too late. The only logical course of action at…

My tinfoil hat seeing Trump Admin wrecking havoc in the American continent is that they (or Trump specifically) believed that contesting American hegemony in Pacific within 1st island chain or even 2nd island chain is herculean task and it will be harder and harder as time goes due to the tyranny of distance and PLA modernization . So now the policy is American redoubt where US assert unanimous influence in the Ameri…

Retreat to Fortress America is also a response to nuclear proliferation, which will occur as the US retreats from its role as world policeman.

Another factor is the desire to retire federal government debt by dollar devaluation. Onshoring of manufacturing by high tariffs would be preparatory for this.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#240

Post by nonethewiser »

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…

> Even so, given US wage levels it's a fantasy to believe that US shipyards could compete with, say, China.

And material costs

Post reply on HN