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The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

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Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#291

Post by philwelch »

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.

The US alliances with SK and JP are much closer than the alliance with Israel. For instance we have American military forces permanently forward deployed to both of those countries, but none in Israel. We also have mutual defense treaties with Japan and SK, but not Israel.

The problem is that Korean and Japanese shipyards are far more vulnerable to Chinese attack than shipyards in North America would be. But Korean shipbuilding companies have been interested in buying and building shipyards in the US, which is helpful.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#292

Post by timewizard »

Yeul wrote: post #113
timewizard wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get good at things by doing them repeatedly and optimising In an environment where information is shared freely and widely. > So of course if we build a couple of naval ships every decade, maybe a giant train line every 30 years or similar, it will be done terribly. That's a reasonable explanation but it's not exclusive. You can still face these challenges and not do a terrible job. There is plenty of evidence this…

In the 1970s the Netherlands tried to save it's shipyards (from Japan and Korea at the time China was nothing). There's just no point to it your oil tankers end up more expensive so nobody will want to buy them.

> In the 1970s the Netherlands tried to save it's shipyards

They have several successful ship building companies today. Is your point that it didn't work? That doesn't seem born out by the reality of today.

> There's just no point to it your oil tankers end up more expensive so nobody will want to buy them.

So the quality is equivalent? And there are no buyers who require high quality in their ships?

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#293

Post by mordae »

bamboozled wrote: post #261
RobKohr wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think they're referring to the unelected people doing illegal things completely unchecked (currently)?

Also elected people doing illegal and unconstitutional things, repeatedly.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#294

Post by indymike »

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).

It depends on what kind of drones you are operating doesn't it? Range, speed and payload seems to be the drivers for gigantism in military vehicles. So if you look at shorter range, or more accurate, smaller explosive delivery, you don't need a USS Ford size thing to act as a mobile base for them. One of the big lessons in Ukraine is that small, cheap and accurate works.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#295

Post by ianburrell »

indymike wrote: post #89

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…

The aircraft carrier needs to be protected by surface ships. Submarines can’t shoot down missiles. Drone ships can’t do the job unless they are the size of destroyer. Ships on long deployments need maintenance, so now you have manned ship. We almost can’t make automomous ships, they need

Arsenal ships are a bad idea because putting all the missiles in one basket. It is better to have 3 destroyers that can cover different directions, or go on separate missions. The Navy has finally figured out reloading, it is much better to send one ship away to reload and still keep defense.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#296

Post by bluGill »

bombcar wrote: post #278
throwaway173738 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah a competent framing crew can bang together a 2-story 4000 square foot home from sticks in 2 weeks.

Transportation costs are so high that it's often cheaper to stick-build a house than to bring in a manufactured one. The manufactured ones only win when it's very tiny (think: trailer) or when you do an entire development with them, and even then you often need a rail line or something to make it work. Even the "put together on site" kit ones run into problems that the stick-built basically avoid, like things not lin…

Note that stick built most of the wood is cut to size at a factory. If the wall is 8 foot, then you just grad the precut stack of 92-5/8" studs (after adding the top and bottom plates that works out to 8 foot with some needed slop for the ceiling and flooring), likewise you will get 104-5/8" for 9 foot walls. No other wall size is common in the US because then you have to cut all the boards on site for higher costs. Likewise the windows and doors are standard sizes from a factory. No plumber is making pipes on site, they just use a factory made pipe, valve, sink... A modern house really is a kit, there are just enough different size options and styles that there are many factory options and it seems each is custom even though most of the parts are standard.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#297

Post by philwelch »

ethbr1 wrote: post #175
plastic3169 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the worry for everyone else. Truly it makes a huge difference in global politics. Like parent I am still surprised how paranoid the US seems. It’s almost like growing up overprotected you become extremely fearful. There is almost no practical cost to US with going into war so the result is that US is constantly fighting and makes it the core focus of the society (along with innovation and more positive s…

The rest of the world should be very scared if the US isn't ready to go to peer-state war. - Europe has under-invested in its military for 30 years. - Japan by constitutional decree. - South Korea is rapidly building out an armaments industry, but they're also still at war. - The UK is gutted and unable to afford much of anything. - India and Pakistan are laser focused on each other. If China or Russia feel in an exp…

India is much more concerned with China these days.

> I was struck on this trip by how clearly India’s chosen rival is no longer Pakistan, but China. It does not matter if we are talking in military, technological, economic, or even cultural terms. The default comparison Indians make is with China.

https://scholars-stage.org/observations-from-india/

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#298

Post by throw0101c »

ethbr1 wrote: post #252
throw0101c wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 'basi…

> Both Canada and Mexico would be obvious allies for this

Yeah…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_trade_war_w...

> and it would be a win/win solution for less sensitive ships / ship components (e.g. finish shell, then fit in US shipyards).

Canadian shipyards are actually relatively busy nowadays:

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

To the point that some things will not be built locally:

* https://news.usni.org/2024/11/08/canadian-officials-pricing-...

* https://www.canada.ca/en/public-services-procurement/news/20...

Not sure if some more civilian-leaning building capacity could perhaps be available.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#299

Post by jjk166 »

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…

This is a false narrative. US shipbuilding did not rest on its laurels because of the jones act. The Jones Act was passed in the 1920s; US shipbuilding rose to a dominant position while it was in place. The US lost that position only after the 1980s cessation of subsidies to domestic shipbuilders. Ironically this was a move to stop foreign nations from subsidizing their shipbuilding industries, but it was never reciprocated and the subsidies were not returned after it proved to be ineffective.

The jones act does not particularly protect US shipbuilding, the issue is it destroyed the customer base for US shipbuilding by making domestic marine transport uneconomical. It is a protection for the auto industry by making road transport of goods more cost competitive. Modify the jones act, start shipping things domestically by ship, suddenly there's a big market for ships.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#300

Post by philwelch »

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…

Taiwan’s strategic value has less to do with semiconductors and more to do with geography. It is the keystone of the First Island Chain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_island_chain
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