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This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have pushed

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 this stage would be to seek an alternative that leverages the US's existing strengths. Naval vessels are largely outdated technology and meanwhile the US is the world leader in aerospace manufacturing. If we were to revive the 747 Cruise Missile Carrier concept, or else an equivalent program, it could deliver the same range and operational payload as a guided missile destroyer, but at dramatically lower cost and higher operational tempo. With the ability to rapidly ferry munitions thousands of miles to a conflict zone, one 747 CMC aircraft could replace multiple guided missile destroyers despite costing one fifth the price. This is possible because the 747 CMC is based on a reliable and proven aircraft with existing economies of scale. Thank you for reading my shameless sales pitch.

missedthecue 2y ago
The Jones Act has nothing to do with shipbuilding. Repealing it would make it cheaper to send goods to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. It would not make domestic shipyards more competitive.
briandear 2y ago
Naval vessels aren’t outdated tech. It allows longer term force projection you can’t get without ground-based. I can stick a destroyer off the coast and leave it there as long as I want. It’s a lot harder to build an airbase. Submarines can stay on station almost indefinitely. Transporting tanks, artillery, vehicles, is difficult by air when done at scale. Air extraction of a SEAL team is done by helicopters. And those helicopters need to land somewhere. They need fuel and crews and supplies. Forward deployed ground bases are logistically more difficult than having a carrier group off the coast. As a missile platform, there are certainly alternatives such as the 747 or even space based weaponry, but naval vessels are more than simply weapons platforms. Also air-based missile platforms depend on a guarantee of air superiority —- it would be naïve to suggest that the U.S. would have that air superiority in all theaters of battle.
__loam 2y ago
Destroyers are a lot bigger than aircraft. Big enough to carry equipment that can be used to defend themselves like SAMs and CIWS. You can also park a destroyer offshore and sit there, menacingly, without exposing the ship to AWACS and long range fighter patrols. Anti-ship missiles exist but Aegis is a lot more durable to that.
- snailmailstare 2y ago
  I think Russia still has most of its fleet because the US wasn't initially comfortable giving Ukraine the range that is typical?
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Afaik, the US hasn't given Ukraine any latest-generation anti-ship missiles (cruise or ballistic). Ukraine has sunk Russian shipping at dock with ALCM or at sea with their homegrown ASCM.
p00dles 2y ago
All kinds of people from all kinds of places read HN, so maybe better to use more general language - referring to “Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than _ours_”
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  >maybe better to use more general language Unless a visitor is unaware that this is a US website, then it would actually help be more informative than otherwise. And if a visitor is already aware, what difference does it make?
  - wongarsu 2y ago
    I had no issue understanding it and didn't even realize. Not because this website happens to be operated by a US company, but because of US defaultism. If on the internet somebody forgets that other countries exist or that people from other nationalities might be involved, they are American. Occasionally somebody complains how non-inclusive it is, but for the most part we all ignore it
- dani__german 2y ago
  tone policing lost the 2024 US presidential election. I wouldn't recommend continuing it. Have a great day.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  " referring to “Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than _ours_”" Is it not? Why do we need to be careful not to offend the Chinese? Unless we are worried they are tracking HN accounts? Or maybe you are saying, it should be more specific, and say "US" instead of "_ours_".
- nonethewiser 2y ago
  Clearly he's from the US. He's simply speaking from his perspective.
throw0101c 2y ago
> 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 there are hardly any US merchant marines any more. The US government used to own transport boats and lease them to US shipping companies, but they've not bothered to build news ones in decades, and so most transport ships are foreign owned. If there's a war, and you need ship matériel to the war zone, do you think commercial ships will enter it? Perhaps the US government should eschew the Free Market™ a bit and own the means of transportation. The point of the Jones Act—or at least that one particular section that a lot of folks tend to talk about—is to have US citizens and US ships available in case of war. But given US prices relative to the prices for other countries, it costs more, and the US has not been willing to pay the premium to support that readiness. Edit: The channel What's Going on with Shipping? has a number of videos on the topic of the what people call "the Jones Act", but more specifically about Section 27, the cabotage rules. See perhaps these to get a good overview of the topic: * "The pros and cons of The Jones Act", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOIx-OAvxqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOIx-OAvxqQ * "The Jones Act Makes Shipping More Expensive?", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95om9PGI758 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95om9PGI758 * "Jones Act Debate | Center for Maritime Strategy & Heritage Foundation", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWKz3psejb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWKz3psejb0 * "The Passage of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920: The Jones Act", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O_EhPbmr74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O_EhPbmr74 * Optional more: https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping/search?query=jones%20act https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping/search?query=jones%20a...
- jabl 2y ago
  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 would fold in an instant. So a repeal of the Jones act would need to be coupled to an extended investment program into the shipbuilding sector. Say, something like how the SEA economic miracle worked, by requiring, as a condition for various subsidies, the yards to export a certain % of the production in order to ensure prices are competitive. Even so, given US wage levels it's a fantasy to believe that US shipyards could compete with, say, China. But there are shipyards in other high-income countries e.g. in Europe that manage to survive through a combination of various subsidies and focusing on high-end specialized vessels such as cruise ships, icebreakers etc.
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
747 CMC I have to think there is some weakness around re-fueling. Even if there is non-stop re-fueling planes. The 747 seems more 'exposed' than a ship. ? genuinely curious.
XorNot 2y ago
In what universe are naval vessels an outdated technology? This is making the classic mistake of assuming that a platform being vulnerable means it is not useful - which couldn't be further from the truth. The US and NATO are heavily missile based militaries these days, and a ship is an efficient way to move a large amount of heavy ordnance to current theatres of operation. The endurance of a warship with stand off munitions in supporting land forces it's much higher than any air borne assets and a lot cheaper to run and that's very much the key: money at these scales is far from unlimited, and just because an aircraft could do any particular job doesn't mean you can sustain aircraft doing every job in a conflict (ala there's a reason special forces aren't just regular forces).
mapt 2y ago
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.
- eunos 2y ago
  Good luck with that after Nippon Steel controversy
  - chrisco255 2y ago
    That was with regards to Nippon buying US Steel? Why is it necessary they own US steel production?
- tsudonym 2y ago
  Biden considered Nippon Steel a national security threat so the Japanese are going to raise an eyebrow when the US Navy begs them to work on actual military ships
  - chrisco255 2y ago
    They considered foreign ownership of U.S. Steel a national security threat. Rightfully so. It is a key industry and has to be fostered internally.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      The question is how to get U.S. Steel to invest in modern equipment and processes. U.S. steel is one of the companies that invested in more efficiency in their core processes and failed to be ready when new processes went from expensive to cheaper and better.
      - chrisco255 2y ago
        Still not following why Japan needs to own it in order for that to occur. If we have a foreign dependency problem, the solution is not to add a different foreign dependency.
eunos 2y ago
My tinfoil hat seeing Trump Admin wrecking havoc in the American continent is that they (or Trump specifically) believed that contesting American hegemony in Pacific within 1st island chain or even 2nd island chain is herculean task and it will be harder and harder as time goes due to the tyranny of distance and PLA modernization . So now the policy is American redoubt where US assert unanimous influence in the American continent while slowly recognize other great power's sphere of influence. Even hawkish Rubio already wrote about multipolarity.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Retreat to Fortress America is also a response to nuclear proliferation, which will occur as the US retreats from its role as world policeman. Another factor is the desire to retire federal government debt by dollar devaluation. Onshoring of manufacturing by high tariffs would be preparatory for this.
dumah 2y ago
The primary purpose of guided missile destroyers is missile defense. Modern destroyers are capable of staying on station almost indefinitely and defending themselves and allied vessels from nearly any existing airborne threat. Such a platform needs to be on station and close to assets at risk so it can interdict. You would need to orbit these platforms continuously to provide protection, and would need more than one of them at all times. Missile defense has been one of the biggest topics in international security over the last year, and is Trump's biggest defense priority. This is not a good sales pitch.
VoodooJuJu 2y ago
[dead]
jiscariot 2y ago
The fact that the elephant in the room, the Jones Act, is never mentioned in the parent article, is pretty telling.
philipov 2y ago
You seem to misunderstand what the Jones Act does and does not do. Our current predicament is not caused by the Jones Act.
Supermancho 2y ago
> Naval vessels are largely outdated technology Depends on the purpose. For patrolling, shipping, and disaster relief, it's a lot cheaper and more flexible (in terms of utility et al) than airplanes.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  Add in airplanes being extremely fragile, never all-weather, needing a nearby base to do even a vague approximation of station-keeping, having vastly lower payloads, ...
- ranger207 2y ago
  Or anti-submarine warfare, or visit-board-search-and-seizure, or persistent and powerful sensors, or ballistic missile defense...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
contingencies 2y ago
Use the allies. South Korea is good at building large ships. They built so many recently there's an oversupply. I bet they'd love some contracts.
leoedin 2y ago
> This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. This is what politicians just don’t seem to realise about industry and engineering. People get good at things by doing them repeatedly and optimising. That’s the only proven way. 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. Then there’s lots of hand wringing about how we can’t do this any more. We are so, so far behind China in industrial capacity now. If we ever did get in a war with them they’d outbuild us 10 to 1. Technical advantages would be pretty much irrelevant at that level.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  >This is what politicians just don’t seem to realise about industry and engineering. Who gives these idiots power? Oh, that's right, we do. Every two-bit is happy to screech about economics of scale out of one side of their mouth but you turn around and pick some other issue that they feel differently about and they want it regulated in whatever way they fancy, economics and long term feedback loops be damned. The real problem is that western cultural norms (because let's be real here, this isn't just a US problem) don't sufficiently punish and dissuade people from being like this. It's not even lightly taboo unless you're a public figure and do it flagrantly, and even then nobody "cares", it's just an angle by which the people who don't like you get to fling rhetorical poo at you. And the problem runs bottom to top. It's not just the politicians, it's all of us.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Worse if someone does care, the other side see this and reflexively opposed it. So often good things one side starts are stopped by the other the next election and so progress could not be made.
- nonethewiser 2y ago
  The input cost prohibit economies of scale. The US cannot produce ships at scale without drastically lowering labor and material costs. This is a features of deindustrialization, offshoring, specialization, etc. The so-called uncultured rubes decrying globalization have a point on this one.
pavpanchekha 2y ago
I think Rapid Dragon, plus recent talk of using the B21 for air combat/to replace NGAD are pointing in this direction: use large, numerous, and cavernous planes for Pacific firepower.
- peepeepoopoo105 2y ago
  Rapid Dragon cannibalizes our existing military transport capacity and can't achieve the same kind of economies of scale and high operational tempo that would be possible with a commercial airliner platform. Commercial airliners are designed to land, swap passengers, refuel, and take off with very little down time. Meanwhile, military aircraft are notoriously high maintenance.
  - Tostino 2y ago
    I'm not understanding the connection you are making with commercial aircraft. Do you mean rapid dragon should have been developed to work with our commercial airliner fleet rather than our military transport aircraft? How would that work? I don't see rear cargo ramps on commercial aircraft (there may be some, but I don't know of them).
    - bombcar 2y ago
      He's arguing that the military should (when possible) use modified commercial airliners as transport (like the old 747 Cargos) because then they benefit from the economies of commercial scale. Sure, the plane would be customized, but some 50?80? percent of it would be the same as the commercial birds. And the 747 at least could open the front and rear.
pbmonster 2y ago
> the 747 CMC is based on a reliable and proven aircraft with existing economies of scale. This is no longer true, unfortunately. The assembly line tooling has been decommissioned and scrapped, the supply chain is shut down, essential personnel has retired. If you want to restart the line, you would have to fund the entire 747-8 program over again from the ground up.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  The CMC concept has been replaced by Rapid Dragon.
Animats 2y ago
Huh? The Jones Act was supposed to help American shipbuilding. It's a requirement that vessels which operate between US ports must be made in the US, crewed by the US, and flagged to the US. It didn't help much, but that was the plan. China's shipbuilding industry is so big that their aircraft carriers are being constructed by shipyards that make large cargo ships. Aerial photos show shipyards with drydocks full of cargo ships, with an warship or two mixed in. US warships are mostly built by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock, and the Bath Iron Works, which don't make civilian ships. There's little economy of scale in US warship construction. Some years ago, the head of Newport News told Congress that if they'd order two carriers at the same time, the company would throw in a third one for free. Congress declined the offer. The PLAN now has more warships than the US Navy. Fewer carriers, but that's being fixed. China's carriers are getting better. The type 001 carrier was a refurbished Russian carrier. The type 002 was a smaller ski-jump carrier. The type 003 was comparable to the US Kitty Hawk class. Whether the next carrier will be nuclear powered hasn't been announced.
- raverbashing 2y ago
  > The Jones Act was supposed to help American shipbuilding Yes And this is what happens. Naive protectionism 101
  - poisonarena 2y ago
    chuckling to myself in my bed while reading this comment after working 12 hours on my oil tanker today. I am an OS in the SIU and i spend every night reading a little HN to motivate me to finish my software hobby projects so i can escape this hell
    - walthamstow 2y ago
      More power to you mate. I knew nothing when I first came here, now I've been a working SWE for 5 years.
    - themaninthedark 2y ago
      Good luck! My brother is a Merchant Mariner, I think he is a First Mate now...he gets way better pay than I do but the working hours sound terrible. The shit that you guys went through with COVID with the extended rotations was hell.
paganel 2y ago
I think when it comes to Naval Power the US's grand strategy throughout the modern era has mostly been based on the fact that the continental US is, de facto, a (very) big island when it comes to the connections with the rest of the world. So, in the event of a new world war they would have two options: one, maintain naval power superiority and thus ensure that the things that the US needs to come from over-seas still come through, or two, return to autarky and economic isolationism (which, up to a point, they could sustain based on their home resources) and hope for the best. It's interesting that the current US administration is doing a combination of the two, see the debacle for the Panama Canal when it comes to my first point, and the return to economic isolationism and even hints of wanting to incorporate Canada when it comes to my second point. On the other hand Air Power has never ever won a big war all by itself. The only war that let's say was won via said Air Power alone was the 1999 war against Milosevic's Yugoslavia, and, possibly, the First Gulf War. But the US won't be able to win a conventional war against China or/and Russia based on Air Power alone, never.
- bigbacaloa 2y ago
  [dead]

missedthecue 2y ago

The Jones Act has nothing to do with shipbuilding. Repealing it would make it cheaper to send goods to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. It would not make domestic shipyards more competitive.

briandear 2y ago

Naval vessels aren’t outdated tech. It allows longer term force projection you can’t get without ground-based. I can stick a destroyer off the coast and leave it there as long as I want. It’s a lot harder to build an airbase. Submarines can stay on station almost indefinitely. Transporting tanks, artillery, vehicles, is difficult by air when done at scale. Air extraction of a SEAL team is done by helicopters. And those helicopters need to land somewhere. They need fuel and crews and supplies. Forward deployed ground bases are logistically more difficult than having a carrier group off the coast. As a missile platform, there are certainly alternatives such as the 747 or even space based weaponry, but naval vessels are more than simply weapons platforms. Also air-based missile platforms depend on a guarantee of air superiority —- it would be naïve to suggest that the U.S. would have that air superiority in all theaters of battle.

__loam 2y ago

Destroyers are a lot bigger than aircraft. Big enough to carry equipment that can be used to defend themselves like SAMs and CIWS. You can also park a destroyer offshore and sit there, menacingly, without exposing the ship to AWACS and long range fighter patrols. Anti-ship missiles exist but Aegis is a lot more durable to that.

snailmailstare 2y ago
I think Russia still has most of its fleet because the US wasn't initially comfortable giving Ukraine the range that is typical?
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Afaik, the US hasn't given Ukraine any latest-generation anti-ship missiles (cruise or ballistic). Ukraine has sunk Russian shipping at dock with ALCM or at sea with their homegrown ASCM.

p00dles 2y ago

All kinds of people from all kinds of places read HN, so maybe better to use more general language - referring to “Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than _ours_”

fuzzfactor 2y ago
>maybe better to use more general language Unless a visitor is unaware that this is a US website, then it would actually help be more informative than otherwise. And if a visitor is already aware, what difference does it make?
- wongarsu 2y ago
  I had no issue understanding it and didn't even realize. Not because this website happens to be operated by a US company, but because of US defaultism. If on the internet somebody forgets that other countries exist or that people from other nationalities might be involved, they are American. Occasionally somebody complains how non-inclusive it is, but for the most part we all ignore it
dani__german 2y ago
tone policing lost the 2024 US presidential election. I wouldn't recommend continuing it. Have a great day.
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
" referring to “Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 230 times greater than _ours_”" Is it not? Why do we need to be careful not to offend the Chinese? Unless we are worried they are tracking HN accounts? Or maybe you are saying, it should be more specific, and say "US" instead of "_ours_".
nonethewiser 2y ago
Clearly he's from the US. He's simply speaking from his perspective.

throw0101c 2y ago

> 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 there are hardly any US merchant marines any more. The US government used to own transport boats and lease them to US shipping companies, but they've not bothered to build news ones in decades, and so most transport ships are foreign owned. If there's a war, and you need ship matériel to the war zone, do you think commercial ships will enter it? Perhaps the US government should eschew the Free Market™ a bit and own the means of transportation. The point of the Jones Act—or at least that one particular section that a lot of folks tend to talk about—is to have US citizens and US ships available in case of war. But given US prices relative to the prices for other countries, it costs more, and the US has not been willing to pay the premium to support that readiness. Edit: The channel What's Going on with Shipping? has a number of videos on the topic of the what people call "the Jones Act", but more specifically about Section 27, the cabotage rules. See perhaps these to get a good overview of the topic: * "The pros and cons of The Jones Act", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOIx-OAvxqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOIx-OAvxqQ * "The Jones Act Makes Shipping More Expensive?", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95om9PGI758 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95om9PGI758 * "Jones Act Debate | Center for Maritime Strategy & Heritage Foundation", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWKz3psejb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWKz3psejb0 * "The Passage of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920: The Jones Act", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O_EhPbmr74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O_EhPbmr74 * Optional more: https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping/search?query=jones%20act https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping/search?query=jones%20a...

jabl 2y ago
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 would fold in an instant. So a repeal of the Jones act would need to be coupled to an extended investment program into the shipbuilding sector. Say, something like how the SEA economic miracle worked, by requiring, as a condition for various subsidies, the yards to export a certain % of the production in order to ensure prices are competitive. Even so, given US wage levels it's a fantasy to believe that US shipyards could compete with, say, China. But there are shipyards in other high-income countries e.g. in Europe that manage to survive through a combination of various subsidies and focusing on high-end specialized vessels such as cruise ships, icebreakers etc.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

747 CMC I have to think there is some weakness around re-fueling. Even if there is non-stop re-fueling planes. The 747 seems more 'exposed' than a ship. ? genuinely curious.

XorNot 2y ago

In what universe are naval vessels an outdated technology? This is making the classic mistake of assuming that a platform being vulnerable means it is not useful - which couldn't be further from the truth. The US and NATO are heavily missile based militaries these days, and a ship is an efficient way to move a large amount of heavy ordnance to current theatres of operation. The endurance of a warship with stand off munitions in supporting land forces it's much higher than any air borne assets and a lot cheaper to run and that's very much the key: money at these scales is far from unlimited, and just because an aircraft could do any particular job doesn't mean you can sustain aircraft doing every job in a conflict (ala there's a reason special forces aren't just regular forces).

mapt 2y ago

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.

eunos 2y ago
Good luck with that after Nippon Steel controversy
- chrisco255 2y ago
  That was with regards to Nippon buying US Steel? Why is it necessary they own US steel production?
tsudonym 2y ago
Biden considered Nippon Steel a national security threat so the Japanese are going to raise an eyebrow when the US Navy begs them to work on actual military ships
- chrisco255 2y ago
  They considered foreign ownership of U.S. Steel a national security threat. Rightfully so. It is a key industry and has to be fostered internally.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    The question is how to get U.S. Steel to invest in modern equipment and processes. U.S. steel is one of the companies that invested in more efficiency in their core processes and failed to be ready when new processes went from expensive to cheaper and better.
    - chrisco255 2y ago
      Still not following why Japan needs to own it in order for that to occur. If we have a foreign dependency problem, the solution is not to add a different foreign dependency.

eunos 2y ago

My tinfoil hat seeing Trump Admin wrecking havoc in the American continent is that they (or Trump specifically) believed that contesting American hegemony in Pacific within 1st island chain or even 2nd island chain is herculean task and it will be harder and harder as time goes due to the tyranny of distance and PLA modernization . So now the policy is American redoubt where US assert unanimous influence in the American continent while slowly recognize other great power's sphere of influence. Even hawkish Rubio already wrote about multipolarity.

pfdietz 2y ago
Retreat to Fortress America is also a response to nuclear proliferation, which will occur as the US retreats from its role as world policeman. Another factor is the desire to retire federal government debt by dollar devaluation. Onshoring of manufacturing by high tariffs would be preparatory for this.

dumah 2y ago

The primary purpose of guided missile destroyers is missile defense. Modern destroyers are capable of staying on station almost indefinitely and defending themselves and allied vessels from nearly any existing airborne threat. Such a platform needs to be on station and close to assets at risk so it can interdict. You would need to orbit these platforms continuously to provide protection, and would need more than one of them at all times. Missile defense has been one of the biggest topics in international security over the last year, and is Trump's biggest defense priority. This is not a good sales pitch.

VoodooJuJu 2y ago

[dead]

jiscariot 2y ago

The fact that the elephant in the room, the Jones Act, is never mentioned in the parent article, is pretty telling.

philipov 2y ago

You seem to misunderstand what the Jones Act does and does not do. Our current predicament is not caused by the Jones Act.

Supermancho 2y ago

> Naval vessels are largely outdated technology Depends on the purpose. For patrolling, shipping, and disaster relief, it's a lot cheaper and more flexible (in terms of utility et al) than airplanes.

bell-cot 2y ago
Add in airplanes being extremely fragile, never all-weather, needing a nearby base to do even a vague approximation of station-keeping, having vastly lower payloads, ...
ranger207 2y ago
Or anti-submarine warfare, or visit-board-search-and-seizure, or persistent and powerful sensors, or ballistic missile defense...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

contingencies 2y ago

Use the allies. South Korea is good at building large ships. They built so many recently there's an oversupply. I bet they'd love some contracts.

leoedin 2y ago

> This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. This is what politicians just don’t seem to realise about industry and engineering. People get good at things by doing them repeatedly and optimising. That’s the only proven way. 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. Then there’s lots of hand wringing about how we can’t do this any more. We are so, so far behind China in industrial capacity now. If we ever did get in a war with them they’d outbuild us 10 to 1. Technical advantages would be pretty much irrelevant at that level.

potato3732842 2y ago
>This is what politicians just don’t seem to realise about industry and engineering. Who gives these idiots power? Oh, that's right, we do. Every two-bit is happy to screech about economics of scale out of one side of their mouth but you turn around and pick some other issue that they feel differently about and they want it regulated in whatever way they fancy, economics and long term feedback loops be damned. The real problem is that western cultural norms (because let's be real here, this isn't just a US problem) don't sufficiently punish and dissuade people from being like this. It's not even lightly taboo unless you're a public figure and do it flagrantly, and even then nobody "cares", it's just an angle by which the people who don't like you get to fling rhetorical poo at you. And the problem runs bottom to top. It's not just the politicians, it's all of us.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Worse if someone does care, the other side see this and reflexively opposed it. So often good things one side starts are stopped by the other the next election and so progress could not be made.
nonethewiser 2y ago
The input cost prohibit economies of scale. The US cannot produce ships at scale without drastically lowering labor and material costs. This is a features of deindustrialization, offshoring, specialization, etc. The so-called uncultured rubes decrying globalization have a point on this one.

pavpanchekha 2y ago

I think Rapid Dragon, plus recent talk of using the B21 for air combat/to replace NGAD are pointing in this direction: use large, numerous, and cavernous planes for Pacific firepower.

peepeepoopoo105 2y ago
Rapid Dragon cannibalizes our existing military transport capacity and can't achieve the same kind of economies of scale and high operational tempo that would be possible with a commercial airliner platform. Commercial airliners are designed to land, swap passengers, refuel, and take off with very little down time. Meanwhile, military aircraft are notoriously high maintenance.
- Tostino 2y ago
  I'm not understanding the connection you are making with commercial aircraft. Do you mean rapid dragon should have been developed to work with our commercial airliner fleet rather than our military transport aircraft? How would that work? I don't see rear cargo ramps on commercial aircraft (there may be some, but I don't know of them).
  - bombcar 2y ago
    He's arguing that the military should (when possible) use modified commercial airliners as transport (like the old 747 Cargos) because then they benefit from the economies of commercial scale. Sure, the plane would be customized, but some 50?80? percent of it would be the same as the commercial birds. And the 747 at least could open the front and rear.

pbmonster 2y ago

> the 747 CMC is based on a reliable and proven aircraft with existing economies of scale. This is no longer true, unfortunately. The assembly line tooling has been decommissioned and scrapped, the supply chain is shut down, essential personnel has retired. If you want to restart the line, you would have to fund the entire 747-8 program over again from the ground up.

throwaway48476 2y ago
The CMC concept has been replaced by Rapid Dragon.

Animats 2y ago

Huh? The Jones Act was supposed to help American shipbuilding. It's a requirement that vessels which operate between US ports must be made in the US, crewed by the US, and flagged to the US. It didn't help much, but that was the plan. China's shipbuilding industry is so big that their aircraft carriers are being constructed by shipyards that make large cargo ships. Aerial photos show shipyards with drydocks full of cargo ships, with an warship or two mixed in. US warships are mostly built by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock, and the Bath Iron Works, which don't make civilian ships. There's little economy of scale in US warship construction. Some years ago, the head of Newport News told Congress that if they'd order two carriers at the same time, the company would throw in a third one for free. Congress declined the offer. The PLAN now has more warships than the US Navy. Fewer carriers, but that's being fixed. China's carriers are getting better. The type 001 carrier was a refurbished Russian carrier. The type 002 was a smaller ski-jump carrier. The type 003 was comparable to the US Kitty Hawk class. Whether the next carrier will be nuclear powered hasn't been announced.

raverbashing 2y ago
> The Jones Act was supposed to help American shipbuilding Yes And this is what happens. Naive protectionism 101
- poisonarena 2y ago
  chuckling to myself in my bed while reading this comment after working 12 hours on my oil tanker today. I am an OS in the SIU and i spend every night reading a little HN to motivate me to finish my software hobby projects so i can escape this hell
  - walthamstow 2y ago
    More power to you mate. I knew nothing when I first came here, now I've been a working SWE for 5 years.
  - themaninthedark 2y ago
    Good luck! My brother is a Merchant Mariner, I think he is a First Mate now...he gets way better pay than I do but the working hours sound terrible. The shit that you guys went through with COVID with the extended rotations was hell.

paganel 2y ago

I think when it comes to Naval Power the US's grand strategy throughout the modern era has mostly been based on the fact that the continental US is, de facto, a (very) big island when it comes to the connections with the rest of the world. So, in the event of a new world war they would have two options: one, maintain naval power superiority and thus ensure that the things that the US needs to come from over-seas still come through, or two, return to autarky and economic isolationism (which, up to a point, they could sustain based on their home resources) and hope for the best. It's interesting that the current US administration is doing a combination of the two, see the debacle for the Panama Canal when it comes to my first point, and the return to economic isolationism and even hints of wanting to incorporate Canada when it comes to my second point. On the other hand Air Power has never ever won a big war all by itself. The only war that let's say was won via said Air Power alone was the 1999 war against Milosevic's Yugoslavia, and, possibly, the First Gulf War. But the US won't be able to win a conventional war against China or/and Russia based on Air Power alone, never.

bigbacaloa 2y ago
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