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How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

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Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#291

Post by rswail »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #65
eru wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you to decide these priorities for other people? Don't we have democracy, so that people can make their own choices?

Yeah, whenever I post a comment you can just prepend "In my humble opinion.." Perhaps more interestingly, as a younger person, I felt very differently. I used to think that military spending was very wasteful. I was ashamed of our countries involvement in the invasion of other countries without UN approval. I had assumed the world was more civilized and peaceful that it was before nukes. We have free trade all over t…

Which is why Australia is re-orienting its defence by moving towards missiles, UAVs, USVs, while still being lumbered with AUKUS.

It's also shoring up diplomacy with Japan, South Korea, was trying to with India, when Biden was attempting to move India away from China.

The future wars are going to be mostly unmanned and Australia will need hyper-local defence, so has to be low cost and easily deployed.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#292

Post by stogot »

yanhangyhy wrote: post #81
stogot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your solution to “Taiwan is outcompeting on silicon” is that the PLA Navy should take it by violent force and overthrow a peaceful nation and justify that calling that normal?

thats clear not what i said

Its not clear what you said

“ china will take taiwan in short times(less than 10 years), so the result wont change anyway. From a historical perspective, this is a normal means of transferring power and status.”

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#293

Post by robbie-c »

iso1631 wrote: post #229
moomin wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, unless you believe we buy steel from the same places we buy ships. The real answer to this is threat analysis: what are the realistic scenarios under which it becomes a problem. e.g. if Japan stops supplying ships a) how likely is that and b) could we just buy them from the Dutch instead? However, the stakes for getting this wrong are high.

The sensible thing would be deep integration with a continent-spanning economy. Sure the UK is an island, but the channel isn't exactly wide (not to mention the tunnel). It's hardly Iceland - even Ireland is more detached. But the UK decided against that in 2016, and despite demographics having shifted the views, there is no general "rejoin" campaign.

I've wondered about this too. I live in the UK and have been idly daydreaming about my next startup, and it seems like Brexit, and therefore having a small market / uncooperative EU, is such a headwind for some of the things I'd like to do. Seems like many UK startups just pretend to be based in SF.

I think rejoin is going to be politically unpopular for a while, as there's no way we could rejoin the EU on anything like as good terms as we left on.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#294

Post by deadbunny »

pjc50 wrote: post #187
ggm wrote: post #2

The best time to try and fix this is 20 or 30 years ago, but absent a time machine, the next best time is now. Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. If you don't regard this as a core competency which should be kept in the national register, then sure, buy the ships from other places. But, don't come whining when the national-strategic in…

If you're going to talk about Edinburgh (I could almost see the Tasman ferry from my house), may I introduce you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_ferry_fiasco "Originally intended to come into service in 2018 and 2019 respectively, both ferries have been delayed by over five years, and costs have more than quadrupled to £460 million" The Scottish government tried to do what commentators here are saying is t…

This is the problem with destroying industries then trying to keep small remaining pockets of it/restarting it. You lose all of the institutional knowledge, the stuff that isn't written down, the stuff that comes from experience.

This is only exacerbated when those projects you're trying to do become massively over budget and late. People decry it as a waste and a failure, leading to any hard won knowledge being lost yet again as those projects gets scrapped and all the people making it lose their jobs.

You don't get good making things if you only try once every 30 years, you get better by continually doing that thing, passing the hard won knowledge down through the workforce by training incoming people not from hiring "experts" and expecting everyone to be up to speed on project #1 immediately.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#295

Post by mapt »

pjc50 wrote: post #187
ggm wrote: post #2

The best time to try and fix this is 20 or 30 years ago, but absent a time machine, the next best time is now. Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. If you don't regard this as a core competency which should be kept in the national register, then sure, buy the ships from other places. But, don't come whining when the national-strategic in…

If you're going to talk about Edinburgh (I could almost see the Tasman ferry from my house), may I introduce you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_ferry_fiasco "Originally intended to come into service in 2018 and 2019 respectively, both ferries have been delayed by over five years, and costs have more than quadrupled to £460 million" The Scottish government tried to do what commentators here are saying is t…

The is rarely some kind of inherent cultural or socioeconomic failing on the part of the producers, it's more often a failure of institutional will and a failure of scale.

Take any product that you actually produce well in Scotland for X Euros per unit in M months, scale production down by 99.9%, wait 20 years for them to lay everybody off, sell off all the factories, start relying on more and more stockpiled or imported parts and overseas labor, sell off important subsidiaries, and just generally become a shell of an industry.

Now build another one using domestic labor and parts, demanding competitive bids and constant redesigns and calling executives into the legislature to harangue them for failures and tell them the budget is closed for this year because of their delays, and now tell me what coefficient I have to tack on to N and M.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#296

Post by rswail »

dwd wrote: post #80
protocolture wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Perhaps we can skip tanks and planes and jump right to weaponized satellites and autonomous drones. I saw a whitepaper that suggested Australia should give up shipbuilding in exchange for drones and electronic warfare. The goal being to present a front like Ukraine does. Bristle with weapons and guarantee that any invasion would be 10 times more costly than anything gained. It was interesting at least.

During Talisman Sabre 25, a RCAF C-17 air-dropped a Himars and some ADF personnel on Christmas Island, simulated a firing and then left. Pushes the defensive line quite a bit further out from the mainland, and you could potentially cover choke points for a naval invasion from the north.

I didn't know that. That's actually impressive, both strategically and in terms of our readiness and capability.

That puts Jakarta in range. I'm sure the Indonesian military took note as well.

Plus we've got Tomahawks now, that's 2500km range, sea launched.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#297

Post by csomar »

ReptileMan wrote: post #210
csomar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US (and maybe the EU) are currently in the process of destroying their knowledge-based economy in the pursuit of dust manufacturing. The reason China is willing to negotiating with the US or the EU is because of massive leverages these countries have when it comes to the monopoly of the knowledge and information economy. If China could turn on a switch and become independent, they'd do it. They can't and it's int…

>The US (and maybe the EU) are currently in the process of destroying their knowledge-based economy in the pursuit of dust manufacturing. The reason China is willing to negotiating with the US or the EU is because of massive leverages these countries have when it comes to the monopoly of the knowledge and information economy. Except that we don't have monopoly on that. Assembled in China, designed in California worke…

> For a lot of stuff it mutated into designed in China, assembled in China.

What am saying is that this is not happening because shit got assembled in China but because of internal issues in the West. Bringing assembly back is going to make matters worse, not better; and I think this is where I (and most?) people disagree here.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#298

Post by oblio »

fmajid wrote: post #272
oblio wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> XXIer century Sorry, but it's a bit funny. Based on the name I assume you're French (speaking, at least)? That "XXIer" contraption is really funny to me, I speak a bit of French. In English it's twenty first so XXI or XXIst, in French as far I know it's vingt et unième, so XXI or XXIème. Is "XXIer" from another French dialect or another language entirely?

Probably German (Zwanzig Erster)

See, that's the problem with (my) assumptions :-D

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#299

Post by flir »

ggm wrote: post #2

The best time to try and fix this is 20 or 30 years ago, but absent a time machine, the next best time is now. Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. If you don't regard this as a core competency which should be kept in the national register, then sure, buy the ships from other places. But, don't come whining when the national-strategic in…

You've got to go up the chain - protect steelmaking, too. And ultimately, where does the iron ore come from?

Not saying you're wrong (idk either way), saying that to do it right is a big pivot.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#300

Post by lotsofpulp »

coldtea wrote: post #127
faichai wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"think" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Are the people really thinking? I don't think they are.

Those people are thinking just fine. With their wallets. Why would they prioritize national interests? Because they were elected to do so? After all they know they were actually elected because people were only given a couple of establishment approved choices, and in their naivety they happened to pick their side this time (after all they alternate between the two choices all the time). They also know they'll be fine…

>After all they know they were actually elected because people were only given a couple of establishment approved choices, and in their naivety they happened to pick their side this time (after all they alternate between the two choices all the time).

Australia has ranked choice voting and mandatory voting. What else could be done to “give” people more choices?

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