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The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

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Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#341

Post by amanda99 »

A lot of folks are saying big ships are outdated. Keep in mind that war is 80% logistics: and if you are going to engage an enemy far away from your landmass (or project power for that matter), you need huge capacity to move materiel to said location, and that normally means ships.

An interesting thing to look at is something called the "Fully Burdened Cost of Fuel": for every gallon that the US delivers to a Forward Operating Base, they spend something like 6-20 gal getting it there.

The point is that you need to move insane amounts of stuff to fight a war effectively. The actual fighting is just the tip of an iceberg of logistics.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#342

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #310
tivert wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let’s turn it around. How does keeping the Jones Act ensure a competitive shipbuilding industry in the US? We could easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on. But blocking competition just keeps the market uncompetitive. Because the US can't "easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on." It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that. Even if you could…

>Because the US can't "easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on." It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that. Even if you could manage to get a program like that passed, there's a large chance it'd get cut in 10 years by some libertarian to pay for yet another tax cut. I need to weigh in on this, I think. I don't know of many libertarians that would refuse to make an exception…

But these days, isn't it similarly the case that security cameras, routers, phones, and similar products could have security-related concerns just like ammunition? I can't imagine cold-war-era US would have been happy buying their telephone networking equipment and fax machines from the USSR, even if they could have somehow offered a better price and performance.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#343

Post by indymike »

ianburrell wrote: post #305
indymike wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Marines are working in close support drone for their amphibious ships. The proposals are the size of helicopters. The problem is that can’t do short range from ships because it is too dangerous to get close to shore. Anti-ship missiles are common now, and guided artillery and glide bombs are possible. Finally, drones haven’t been useful against ships in Red Sea, and some are good size. Speed matters for getting t…

> Finally, drones haven’t been useful against ships in Red Sea

Comparing a Houthi attack against a peer adversary drone & missile attack would likely have very different results. Defense depletion (i.e. out of ammo) is the current weakness of defenses. That is why energy weapons are the next big thing - you don't run out of shells for a laser. Counting on defense is a historic proven way to fail at war-fighting.

> Speed matters for getting through defenses.

As does stealth, surprise, maneuverability, timing, rules of engagement and many other factors. Defense is really difficult - especially given you may be countering something unprecedented. The recent Red Sea activity did not have the element of surprise, no stealth weapons were used and the timing was well known. Not a good bellwether.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#344

Post by tehjoker »

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…

why does everyone just assume that Taiwan and China, which both consider themselves to be "one china" would not simply find some kind of peaceful resolution once the US backs off?

most likely, without a U.S. backer, they would just more closely integrate their economies and this would eventually result in a political solution

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#345

Post by ls612 »

spacemanspiff01 wrote: post #231
lupusreal wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/re…

The game theoretic problem with this scenario (and thus why a Pacific escalation scenario is so dangerous) is that China has essentially all of its forces in the area around China, whereas the US and its treaty allies have their forces scattered around the world. Thus even if the US has a bigger military most of it won't be in theater on day 1 of a conflict, leading China to have every incentive to move as fast as possible and present a fait accompli to the West. If they choose to just do nothing to the US and hope America sits it out, it just gives the US time to redress this force imbalance in the region by moving in assets from around the world. That leads China to be strongly incentivized to strike US forces on day 1, in much the same way the IJN was incentivized to strike early and strike hard 85 years ago.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#346

Post by echelon »

carlosdp wrote: post #334

Repeal the Jones act, get a commercial shipbuilding market going again domestically. In the meantime, leverage the best asset we have: alliances with western nations. South Korea is really good at shipbuilding, to the point they are now authorized to repair US Navy warships based in the PACCOM AOR. Let them build ships for us too.

> get a commercial shipbuilding market going again domestically.

How do you start a flywheel? Our industry is light years behind China and would be prohibitively more expensive.

Tariffs? That's a moral equivalent of the Jones Act, just with more options for buyers.

The thing that worked really well for China was to force Western manufacturers to partner with their domestic industries so that they could learn the tricks of the trade, then be kick the Western companies to the wayside and discard the relationships when they're no longer useful.

I don't think we can mimic the China playbook because of our labor costs. There's no gradient or arbitrage to exploit. Maybe a partnership between the US and Mexico where we take advantage of Mexican labor, yet use US capital and retain ownership?

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#347

Post by echelon »

amanda99 wrote: post #341

A lot of folks are saying big ships are outdated. Keep in mind that war is 80% logistics: and if you are going to engage an enemy far away from your landmass (or project power for that matter), you need huge capacity to move materiel to said location, and that normally means ships. An interesting thing to look at is something called the "Fully Burdened Cost of Fuel": for every gallon that the US delivers to a Forward…

“Infantry wins battles, logistics wins wars”

That said, for smaller engagements when you have a forward operating base, you can air drop a massive amount of tonnage on a dime with C-5s. And if we ever turn Starship into an orbital equipment delivery system, we'll be able to open new salients quickly.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#348

Post by phil21 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #301
Teever wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

Why aren't we trying to come up with something simpler, cheaper, and quicker to manufacture? We had this problem with bombs back before the JDAM was developed, and basically they just stuck an off-the-shelf guidance system onto a dumb bomb. For that matter, why aren't we spinning up a few factories to build artillery shells?

> For that matter, why aren't we spinning up a few factories to build artillery shells?

As with most problems in the US today - short term thinking and seemingly lack of any sort of long-term strategic planning whatsoever.

I was a teenager when they were shutting down the (mostly mothballed, but still kept in enough working order to spin back up) ammunition factories in my state. I thought even then it was a stupid short-sighted move, and it's only proven worse since then.

Not only do we not have any production capacity to speak of - we also are now completely reliant on a handful of plants that are vulnerable to two or three well-executed attacks to take them completely offline. We entirely lack geographic diversity when before our arms manufacturing was spread throughout the country and fairly resilient.

As a nation we completely forgot the lessons learned in WWII. Production capacity is almost all that matters so long as you can hold the front long enough to spin it up. China is quite obviously orders of magnitude better positioned for this in the modern era. Perhaps even moreso than the US was in the 1940's given the types of arms that are expected to win future wars.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#349

Post by philwelch »

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 problem with arsenal ships is twofold. One, we don’t have enough missiles to fill the ships we have now, let alone a ship specialized to carry as many missiles as possible. Two, missiles and ships are like eggs and baskets. To counteract the egg/basket problem you want to distribute your missiles among multiple ships, and then equip those ships with sensors and defensive systems so they’re harder to sink and so you can develop a detailed picture of the battlespace. We have a name for that kind of ship; it’s a guided missile destroyer.

You can go smaller (that’s called a guided missile frigate) but thanks to the square cube law, a bigger ship can carry much more than twice as much missiles, sensors, etc. as two ships that are half the size. You also get economies of scale on maintenance. There are tradeoffs here, and the DDG as the backbone of the surface fleet and the guardian of the aircraft carrier is a great solution to those tradeoffs.

Don’t be a doomer when it comes to the arms race between missiles and air defense. Air defense can defeat a concentrated missile/drone attack, as we’ve seen in the two recent Iranian attacks on Israel. There are novel air attack threats from drones, but there are also novel air defense systems to counter them such as lasers (https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1886259012632535520). If I had to guess I’d say that the balance is actually shifting in favor of air defense on net.

I do agree with you that submarines are important. In fact the Ohio class SSGN practically is an arsenal ship. The problem with submarines is that they have to operate as lone wolves. Surface ships and carrier aircraft can share sensor data and use sensor fusion to construct a shared picture of the battlespace, but submarines can’t be looped into the network without exposing themselves. Again, tradeoffs. And usually the solution to these tradeoffs is combined arms—you build a task force with a carrier, some surface ships, and some submarines and each ship has its own job to do to cover the weaknesses of the others.

Re: The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution

#350

Post by rendang »

ethbr1 wrote: post #185
themaninthedark wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that it is easy to say that Trump admires dictators, he is such great friends with them, they have compromising information on him and he will allow them to do whatever they want, however, he was president before and during that time China did not invade Taiwan. Also during that time; Russia did not invade Ukraine.

Russia invaded Crimea the year before Trump took office, and he didn't do anything about it during his first term.

*Almost 3 years before Trump took office.

Crimea was early 2014, inauguration was Jan 2017

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