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The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

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Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#251

Post by tsudonym »

mapt wrote: post #161
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…

Another alternative would be adopting South Korea and Japan into closer orbits the way we unconditionally support Israel. South Korea and Japan have strong commercial shipbuilding industries, which are just in the past few years going idle because China is subsidizing theirs more aggressively.

Biden considered Nippon Steel a national security threat so the Japanese are going to raise an eyebrow when the US Navy begs them to work on actual military ships

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#252

Post by ethbr1 »

throw0101c wrote: post #227
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…

> 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 bui…

> 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.

Both Canada and Mexico would be obvious allies for this, and it would be a win/win solution for less sensitive ships / ship components (e.g. finish shell, then fit in US shipyards).

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

This has historically been the biggest problem with the US Navy -- they're really dumb / bad at specifications.

Imho, the US would be well-served by taking ultimate control of ship design out of the Navy's sole hands, and infusing someone with a cost-focused incentive into the process.

It's a terrible joke at this point that the USN starts with "We'll pick an off the shelf foreign design" and then customizes it so much it's no longer mass producible.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#253

Post by aprentic »

This feels like somebody telling Bob Vila, "This house needs a kitchen renovation."

It might actually need a kitchen renovation but you can't actually do it until you repair the foundation under the kitchen. The bathrooms might be a higher priority, you don't have any tools, you just kick out all the contractors, and the next meeting with your parts suppliers is in the courthouse.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#254

Post by dumah »

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 primary purpose of guided missile destroyers is missile defense.

Modern destroyers are capable of staying on station almost indefinitely and defending themselves and allied vessels from nearly any existing airborne threat.

Such a platform needs to be on station and close to assets at risk so it can interdict. You would need to orbit these platforms continuously to provide protection, and would need more than one of them at all times.

Missile defense has been one of the biggest topics in international security over the last year, and is Trump's biggest defense priority.

This is not a good sales pitch.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#255

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#256

Post by Teever »

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…

That's not enough.

What happens if a long conflict breaks out between China and the US can't rebuild capacity lost in the initial phase of the war because China takes out that Korean ship building capacity?

With a capacity 260x times that of America the Chinese will be able to rebuild an overwhelming naval capacity, especially if the war technology turns to cheap, mass produced (semi)autonomous machines as seems to be happening in Ukraine?

Ships are one thing but really matters is the industrial capacity to build missiles that will be the immediate bottleneck. Many American missiles have a lead time measured in months to years and wargames scenarios for a conflict over Taiwan show the US exhausting most of their antiship missiles within weeks.

Once that happens the US will need to retreat from the area and the Chinese will be able to mass produce ships and probably missiles to hunt down any lingering American ships.

America will effectively lose their dominance of the seas and certainly the region.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#257

Post by VoodooJuJu »

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…

[dead]

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#258

Post by lenerdenator »

missedthecue wrote: post #242
lenerdenator wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly.

Which is why you stop exclusively using market forces to determine how industry should be spread out around the globe.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#259

Post by fatnoah »

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…

> The point of the Jones Act—or at least that one particular section that a lot of folks tend to talk about—is to have US citizens and US ships available in case of war. But given US prices relative to the prices for other countries, it costs more, and the US has not been willing to pay the premium to support that readiness.

While we didn't get the ships, we did get a 100 foot railway in Canada: https://maritime-executive.com/article/judge-rules-that-cana...

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#260

Post by MostlyStable »

tivert wrote: post #220
kangaroozach wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are protected from facing competition, then you don’t need to actually compete. Therefore, you don’t develop the competitive advantages. You remain at a competitive disadvantage, but it doesn’t matter since you don’t actually have to face the competition… until someday when the protection is removed and you are left to face the more advantaged competition.

> If you are protected from facing competition, then you don’t need to actually compete. Therefore, you don’t develop the competitive advantages. You remain at a competitive disadvantage, but it doesn’t matter since you don’t actually have to face the competition… until someday when the protection is removed and you are left to face the more advantaged competition. However, it's not uncommon for a company or industry…

It is already moribund to the point of uselessness, yet it is still imposing enormous economic costs on the entire country. If it's goal was to maintain the ability of the US to build and staff ships, then it has utterly and completely failed, and yet it's costs remain. I have never heard a compelling argument why we should keep it.

Without it, we probably wouldn't have a thriving US shipbuilding industry, but we would have significantly (probably orders of magnitude more) intra-state shipping, which would require more ships that would most likely come from close allies which would boost _their_ shipping industry.

For strategic purposes, obviously having our own shipping industry would be better, but that's apparently not on the table. I'll take, as a close second best option, an improved shipbuilding industry of our allies, with a heaping side helping of massive economic benefit.

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