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The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

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Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#241

Post by sudosysgen »

greedo wrote: post #230
deltarholamda wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Patriot has not reliably intercepted Kizhals, they needed an uneconomic interceptor ratio which in a ship would lead to interceptor depletion and failure; at the same time Kizhals is even slower than something like the DF-21 or DF-ZF.

It's a similar story for SM-2/3, in the Red Sea they faced massive interceptor depletion and had to leave, and even then many missiles were not intercepted, we just got lucky that they missed.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#242

Post by missedthecue »

lenerdenator wrote: post #214
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…

It won't. The only way to solve American manufacturing woes is to start punishing people who are willing to sell out their country for shareholder profit. Should have done it 60 years ago, but better late than never.

The US can't build a Supermax cargo ships for $0 profit at a price lower than Chinese shipyards can build one while making a profit.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#243

Post by nonethewiser »

p00dles wrote: post #88
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…

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_”

Clearly he's from the US. He's simply speaking from his perspective.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#245

Post by thereddaikon »

FpUser wrote: post #225
L_Rahman wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conglomerate…

They wouldn't be moving, they would be expanding into the US market. Its a win-win. Hyundai get's access to a previously closed off market due to cabotage regulation. And we get modern ship building. The only loser here are established ship builders who would be forced to modernize and compete. But long term that's a good thing for them too.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#246

Post by nonethewiser »

leoedin wrote: post #7
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…

> This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. This is what politicians just don’t seem to realise about industry and engineering. People get good at things by doing them repeatedly and optimising. That’s the only proven way. So of course if we build a couple of naval ships every decade, maybe a giant train line every 30 years or simil…

The input cost prohibit economies of scale. The US cannot produce ships at scale without drastically lowering labor and material costs.

This is a features of deindustrialization, offshoring, specialization, etc. The so-called uncultured rubes decrying globalization have a point on this one.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#247

Post by Someone »

throw0101c wrote: post #115
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…

> 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…

> If there's a war, and you need ship matériel to the war zone, do you think commercial ships will enter it?

Yes, I think so. In wartime, a government can order them to do so. For example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Mauretania_(1906)#First_Wo...):

“Mauretania was planned to replace the Lusitania on the Transatlantic run after the Lusitania was sunk, but she was ordered by the British government to serve as a troop ship to carry British soldiers during the Gallipoli campaign.”

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#248

Post by rtkwe »

XorNot wrote: post #160
Ylpertnodi wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Submarines and aircraft remain the safest, and best way to deliver offensive firepower. Until drones carrying drones carrying drones becomes a thing.

That doesn't mean anything. There's no reason to think a drone carrier ship would be smaller or cheaper then an aircraft carrier (if it was providing air capability at similar ranges, and if it's not then it'll be much more vulnerable).

Ships can also loiter and provide better cargo capacity for that sustained presence compared to aircraft which is it's own benefit. To replicate that with an air based carrier you'd have to have more of them flying in shifts to maintain presence and coverage of the area.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#249

Post by ethbr1 »

thereddaikon wrote: post #245
FpUser wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 conglomerate…

They wouldn't be moving, they would be expanding into the US market. Its a win-win. Hyundai get's access to a previously closed off market due to cabotage regulation. And we get modern ship building. The only loser here are established ship builders who would be forced to modernize and compete. But long term that's a good thing for them too.

As an analog, I believe South Korean terrestrial armaments companies are doing the same thing with Poland, in order to gain access to European buyers. (Granted, Poland also has a labor cost advantage in Europe)

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#250

Post by rtkwe »

bearjaws wrote: post #221
Tostino wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Suicide attack boats aren't a wholey new threat (see USS Cole) the US has been thinking about defending from small surface craft too. It's really hard to guess how effective any attack and countermeasure will be until you see it in the field and given the shabby state of a lot of Russia's military I'm dubious that the results will be directly comparable especially since the planners on the US side are getting to see and evaluate both sides.
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