261–270 of 469 posts
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.
> [...] if the nation is destined for maritime irrelevance and the laying of its prosperity at the whims of autocrats a world away. Considering what happened in the last two weeks alone this lack of self-awareness is simply brilliant.
What has happened exactly in the last two weeks ?
> [...] if the nation is destined for maritime irrelevance and the laying of its prosperity at the whims of autocrats a world away. Considering what happened in the last two weeks alone this lack of self-awareness is simply brilliant.
What has happened exactly in the last two weeks ?
They're also going to start finding ways to go around the USA with trade, military alliances and more.
Are ships really going to be a 'thing' in any next war anyway, in an age of missiles and drones (both above and below water)? It really pisses me off my dumbass govt spent hundreds of billions of dollars on what I believe will be irrelevant tech, and we may not even get the tech, hows that lol!!! "Here guys, have some money our taxpayers payed us, you don't even need to give us the goods". You'd think the pollies had…
Yes, most wars aren’t between countries with similar military capabilities. Even in a hypothetical war between US and China being limited to moving fuel, food, bullets etc by aircraft alone is a major logistical issue. Military conflict is potentially millions of people and within an order of magnitude that many vehicles. Guarding such slow moving cargo vessels by air alone is again impractical, thus surface ships an…
* Navies guard shipping/supply lines. This is true for war time, but it is also true for peace time.
* Navies can disrupt enemy supply lines. Supply lines are critical in any prolonged conflict.
* Air superiority remains an important aspect of war. We need places near the theater of war to operate aircraft from. An aircraft carrier essentially means we can place an airbase anywhere in the world. This is a more dynamic than limiting ourself to just allies that give us land to build bases.
* Armies often use their navy to secure critical resources needed for the war effort, and guard supply lines extracting those resources. Oil, minerals, food, etc. If we increase our industrial capacity during a war we will need to increase our raw material input, at a time when former trading partners might stop selling to us.
I don't share the confidence in large ships being the future of naval anything. Even in the 90s, surface ships were easy pickings for submarines and antiship missiles. Smaller ships acting as drone carriers combined with arsenal ships can allow local power projection to keep shipping lanes open. Submarines and aircraft remain the safest, and best way to deliver offensive firepower. The aircraft carrier does have a ro…
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.
Like it avoids certain dock taxes/tariffs. Tuned correctly, the US Supermax over time could eke out enough profit that some would be tenable.
Unfortunately the best middle step is probably going to be convincing the naval yards to make some civilian ships, first.
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.
If you can read between the lines of the posture reviews, any potential full scale war with China would include a massive nuclear first strike by necessity.
Everyone is aware of this and is avoiding a large scale engagement.
Most likely a regional war with China (probably over Taiwan or less likely, the Philippines) would draw in lots of regional players because everybody want's to pick China apart.
I don't share the confidence in large ships being the future of naval anything. Even in the 90s, surface ships were easy pickings for submarines and antiship missiles. Smaller ships acting as drone carriers combined with arsenal ships can allow local power projection to keep shipping lanes open. Submarines and aircraft remain the safest, and best way to deliver offensive firepower. The aircraft carrier does have a ro…
>Submarines and aircraft remain the safest, and best way to deliver offensive firepower. Until drones carrying drones carrying drones becomes a thing.
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…
> 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…
In case of war, those ships get commandeered and taken by whoever thinks they can get away with it.
Ships are also not nearly as prevalent as they were in WW2 (as international capable jet transport didn't really exist then). Vietnam used troop transports, but I don't think Desert Storm used much beyond airplanes.
Bulk goods and supplies are another matter.