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Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- h_tbob 2y agoAmericans are pretty much only good at making IP now… which is more valuable from a monetary standpoint.
- tjpnz 2y agoAnd then letting China steal it.
- h_tbob 2y agoHah that’s rich! You can’t steal IP. IP is nothing more than imperialism. It will go down in history as one of the great stupidities the rich use to control the poor. I honor copyright. But not because it’s right. Simply because I can use it now to make bank on software. And I honor the social contract for others. But we are all better off without it. Thanks to it, we reinvent the wheel 50 times making new OSes and stuff such a massive waste of life.
- acheron 2y agoMusic, movies, microcode, and high speed pizza delivery.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- pjc50 2y agoThat's easy: because the US is a nuclear armed power, the pacific aircraft carrier called "Japan" is friendly, and there hasn't been a Pearl Harbor. Everything follows from there. While there is peace, US domestic shipbuilding fundamentally doesn't "matter" all that much politically, not compared to all the thousands of other daily issues or the big issue, tax. The article makes clear that all previous efforts at onshoring shipbuilding, including the hugely successful war efforts, involved spending a lot of public money. If you ask the average taxpayer, how much do they want to spend on subsidies for US shipyard workers, what answer are you going to get? (I also think the Jones Act, like other protectionism, keeps the industry intact but inefficient, another uncomfortable choice) >> high cost of inputs, particularly labor and steel Well, yes. A side effect of being a rich country is expensive labour because workers have other options. > But it now faces a potential naval adversary, in the form of China, with dramatically higher shipbuilding capacity The US has something like 5,000 live nuclear warheads, use of which might significantly reduce Chinese shipping if it comes to that.
- sofixa 2y agoNuclear warheads do not allow you to project power, engage in gunboat diplomacy, and cannot serve as logistics hubs for military operations or evactuions from natural disasters.
- oceanplexian 2y ago> While there is peace, US domestic shipbuilding fundamentally doesn't "matter" all that much politically. You don’t think that without a warships and a nuclear aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean that Iran wouldn’t have invaded Israel? And that the entire region would have completely come apart? Or that without carriers in the South China Sea China wouldn’t have taken Taiwan? The US naval fleet is the #1 most powerful geopolitical tool ever invented in the history of the world. And those ships are equipped with plenty of nukes, ICBM interception, electronic warfare, etc.
- hollerith 2y ago>You don’t think that without a warships and a nuclear aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean that Iran wouldn’t have invaded Israel months ago? Israel is able to nuke Iranian cities (without the help of US warships) and Iran knows that.
- nothercastle 2y agoYou might benefit from looking at a map of Iran at some point. You’ll be surprised to learn that it’s not actually bordering Israel. A ground invasion isn’t possible without going through other countries and a water invasion would take forever and and be impractical.
- vondur 2y agoThe US can have approximately 10,000 troops deployed just about anywhere within a week.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoIran isn't the US. Also, 10,000 troops isn't going to be anywhere near enough to take on Israel.
- turnsout 2y agoAh yes, we will need ships for the coming US/China war where both sides agree to confine the conflict to the water.
- pirate787 2y agoTLDR; Labor unions and protectionism.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoAgreed, need more of both. Will take time, but the political and labor winds are blowing in the right direction. America will learn to build again, just the hard way (as is tradition).
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> need more of both Did we read the same article? It costs twice to 4x as much “to build a ship in the U.S. as it does elsewhere” because our shipbuilding industry “is propped up by some of the most restrictive protectionist laws in the world” and governed by unions that oppose “dramatic changes in shipping and shipbuilding technology.” (“A Japanese shipbuilding executive noted that if ships were behind schedule, American yards were inclined to throw more labor at the problem, where Japanese yards would ask for the reason behind the delays and resolve the fundamental issues.”) That leads to higher “ship costs and construction times,” and a dwindling market share that is propped up by the Navy and Jones Act. If our instinct is more protectionism, we’re just conceding that in a fight we’ll be reliant on the foreign shipyards we’re shielding from American ingenuity.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoWhat is the value of national security and resilience in manufacturing, a supply chain, and a trained, experienced workforce? Have we learned nothing from China and their approach? Financial efficiency leads to system fragility. Fragile systems for discretionary systems, durable, more expensive systems for critical systems. It's operational readiness, and that requirement (guaranteed startup and throughput) has a cost. And if you are outsourcing across nation state borders, you limit control over outcomes and destiny.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
- treebeard901 2y agoThis would not be an issue if major wars were not popping up everywhere or if China has not been building a naval fleet to challenge the U.S. If China and the U.S. get into a conflict, like every war it will be a question of war production. It takes a long time to build a modern ship. It takes even longer to build a shipyard capable of producing modern ships. Any great power war will be long and drawn out unless nukes are used. In a defense of Taiwan or anywhere else in the South China Sea, the defenders advantage will play a role. China with it's numerous shipyards and hypersonic weapons could easily keep the U.S. Navy out and then even more easily out produce it to replace lost ships. It's also a questionable strategy to outsource your ship building to the two countries closest to your only potential naval rival. Usually countries fighting protracted long wars do not put their primary means of production next to enemy forces. Hopefully things remain peaceful and this never matters.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> If China and the U.S. get into a conflict, like every war it will be a question of war production This describes attritional war [1]. Not all wars are attritional. American war planning has, since the Cold War, extracted a peace dividend in not maintaining its warmaking industry, relying, instead, on stockpiles and quick victories. In China, for the first time since the Soviet Union, we have an adversary who could draw down our stockpiles and force us into attritional war. [1] https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/war-and-deterrence-in-the-indo-pacific https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/war-and-deterrence-in...
- treebeard901 2y agoFair point. I was referring to great power conflict which should always result in attritionial war. Not every war as I said. Of course, if one side wins quickly, it would be questionable if it was ever really a great power conflict to begin with.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- zdp7 2y ago
- osnium123 2y agoDo the same factors also apply at our relative incompetence at building planes that don’t crash and semiconductors?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoEverything has become a race to the bottom. It is few and far between to find any product which still exhibits high quality or attention to detail. Formerly good brands continue to hollow out their product for cheaper components. There is no immediate existential concern, so everyone is skimming their own cut anywhere they can.
- Eumenes 2y agoI live near a major shipyard. The answer is unions. They throw a fit almost weekly.
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago>The answer is unions. Never the bosses? Ever? >almost weekly. So, you should have quite a few (verifiable) examples just from this year alone.
- mrlonglong 2y agoCorporate and Wall Street in the pursuit of profit chose to offshore a lot of manufacturing. It's not going to be easy or quick to rebuild these. To win a war you have to have the capacity to quickly build replacements and hold onto resources you need. The answer is not to play the game.
- kmerroll 2y agoI would venture the implied discussion is about more than shipbuilding. Resources, labor, regulation, and other factors raised in the article are endemic across lots of areas and seems symptomatic of market forces and government policy. As a counter argument, I have to ask why the U.S. needs to build ships faster, larger, cheaper than other countries? The U.S. certainly seems to be able to build infrastructure and housing reasonably competitively.