How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry • Hacker News Board

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#341

Post by vintermann » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:26 PM UTC

energy123 wrote: post #334

vintermann wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bah, I'm of the opinion that if the intelligence agencies were asleep at the wheel, that might well be an improvement. But I do think that you're right in that the time of the frigate and aircraft carrier is over, and we'll all more likely to die either from a nuclear missile or from a 50 gram autonomous drone. I agree: the national security argument is hollow. There are other reasons to build ships though, and some…

Attack drones aren't that useful if the two countries are far apart. Consider the 12 Day War between Israel-Iran. Iran's Shahed drones weren't useful, because the slow travel speeds and the long distance meant that Israel could shoot them down at a leisurely pace while they closed the gap. So even their purpose as a saturation attack was not met. But in the Ukraine-Russia war, Iran's Shahed drones, which are being ma…

All you need to do is to smuggle in a little box. Ukraine already did it in Russia.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#342

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

Neil44 wrote: post #313

exasperaited wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, this is just untrue. You were responding to a comment that was only talking about contemporary issues, so at least someone was talking about contemporary issues: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45873952 So I responded, quite logically, as if you were talking about unions in a contemporary context. Not least because you replied in the present tense to a comment about the present.

Parent referenced push cart use which is from the article, hence my reply was also intended in that context. For future reference you might want to go a little easier on people rather than coming straight in with the snarky 'you must be independently wealthy' remarks, and make the goal to understand each other.

[deleted]

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#343

Post by dijit » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:34 PM UTC

AppleBananaPie wrote: post #337

parados wrote: post #332

Former UK manufacturing engineer here (1980s onwards). The manufacturing industry in the UK at that time suffered from three serious problems: - Low productivity workforce. There was a huge pool of skilled, low wage, workers that had little incentive (or will) to up-skill. There were few apprenticeship schemes or other education programs to train them for the modern world. - Poor quality management. "Working in trade…

Thanks for sharing :) I have very little context but it's interesting that, presumably, the lower profit industry was replaced with the higher profit one. And on top of that the higher profit one is probably of less value to society.

The highest value thing you can do in this life is produce food.

The second highest value thing you can do is produce machines that help produce food (or other raw materials).

The least value thing you can do is the services that are needed to support the production of machines that produce food.

This is an uncomfortable thing to read for someone (such as myself) working in tech, in fact that's where the "sectors" comes from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sector

The goal of each sector is to make the previous sectors more productive, and so they're squeezed to become commodity.

We therefore intentionally incentivise de-valuing the things that bring us value as a civilisation, and over-valuing the things that don't.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#344

Post by energy123 » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:45 PM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #341

energy123 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attack drones aren't that useful if the two countries are far apart. Consider the 12 Day War between Israel-Iran. Iran's Shahed drones weren't useful, because the slow travel speeds and the long distance meant that Israel could shoot them down at a leisurely pace while they closed the gap. So even their purpose as a saturation attack was not met. But in the Ukraine-Russia war, Iran's Shahed drones, which are being ma…

All you need to do is to smuggle in a little box. Ukraine already did it in Russia.

Granted that my comment was an over-simplification. Israel did get use from reconnaissance Hermes drones in the 12 Day War, possibly launched from Azerbaijan, for another example to add to the list. But as a broad gesture I believe the sentiment is correct. Strategic depth shifts the utility from saturation with attack drones and SRBMs, like what Russia is doing to Ukraine, and what Iran couldn't replicate with MRBMs due to the distance ... to the classic F16 missile trucks to deliver JDAMs with F35s for SEAD.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#345

Post by theptip » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:49 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #343

AppleBananaPie wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing :) I have very little context but it's interesting that, presumably, the lower profit industry was replaced with the higher profit one. And on top of that the higher profit one is probably of less value to society.

The highest value thing you can do in this life is produce food. The second highest value thing you can do is produce machines that help produce food (or other raw materials). The least value thing you can do is the services that are needed to support the production of machines that produce food. This is an uncomfortable thing to read for someone (such as myself) working in tech, in fact that's where the "sectors" co…

Seems like you’ve smuggled in your conclusion with your definition of “highest value”?

Using the normal definition (how many dollars we will pay for it) the statement is of course objectively false.

Agriculture is certainly necessary, but to take a more extreme example, is air valuable?

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#346

Post by varjag » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:50 PM UTC

kelipso wrote: post #325

varjag wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I generally agree with your point presenting Russia as a decision making entity is dangerously misleading. You're not dealing with democracy or even 1970s committee-run USSR anymore. Sure Putin has broad support and a number of companions but he remains unilateral, undisputed, unchallenged decision maker. Assuming otherwise brings you back into the fold of rational actor argument which has proven a fallacy for…

This is just feel good nonsense… Russia has alliances or agreements with multiple major and minor countries including China. I don’t understand why people post these cope posts online unless it’s just to make themselves feel good.

Aside from you apparently replying to some other comment than mine: Russia honors no treaties or alliances except when it's convenient.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#347

Post by dukeyukey » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:50 PM UTC

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.

Worth pointing out the UK has an extrememly deep and through free trade agreement with the EU, deeper than USMCA. Integration is still there, and isn't going away.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#348

Post by subterraneaniq » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:53 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #322

Somehow the UK is really in a downhill trend. For decades. BREXIT kind of accelerated that; people such as Nigel Farage won't follow on their promise. There won't be noteworthy economic growth for the common man. The naval situation is even worse, because the UK totally depends on the USA now for its own nuclear arsenal. The UK has basically stopped being independent. Changing this will be hard and I don't think anyo…

So you complain about dependency to US but think that it should completely depend on Brussels? Also what does Brexit have to do with a 130 years long decline?

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#349

Post by bparsons » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:53 PM UTC

This video answers a lot of the questions around why shipbuilding is concentrated in east Asia now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gk61ginOqo&t

The TLDR is:

- Unique, state backed financial instruments that remove a lot of the risk for purchasers. The state needs a large amount of foreign reserves to do this;

- A concentration of industrial and labour capacity. You need to achieve a certain scale in order for the economics to work.

They also look at the case of Germany, who don't produce a lot of finished ships, but export the most profitable, complex components to east Asia. They are at least pursuing a rational strategy, even if they don't have the ability to crank out thousands of ships a year.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#350

Post by throw0101d » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 3:53 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #42

jacquesm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a country that is an Island you'd think that the question of whether or not it is 'national-strategic' would have been answered in the affirmative.

Why? Singapore is an island, too, and we don't need a national-strategic ship building industry. As long as your friends build ships, you are fine. The UK is friends with South Korea, for example.

> As long as your friends build ships, you are fine.

Canada and many other countries collectively thought the US was their friend, which it was, until it wasn't. Friends stopping being friends is a risk that needs to be at least considered.