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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 proces

by ggm 1y ago

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 interest needs you to do things outside the commercial domain or under duress, or with restrictions of access to supply in those other places. There is Autarky, and there is total dependency, and there is a massive road in-between. Right now, we're very far from Autarky and we're far too close to total dependency. I might add that Australia is in pretty much the same boat (hah) and the shemozzle over the Tasmanian Ferries (ordered from Scandi, parked in Edinburgh because too big for their home port dockside tie-ups) is an exemplar. And there's a high speed double-hull "cat" style fabricator in Tassie, or at least there was. In the immediate short term, buying hulls and laying them up might be wise. I sailed around Falmouth 30 years ago with a friend and indeed, a lot of big ships were laid up in the estuary and river mouth. Awesome sight in a small sailing boat.

jacquesm 1y ago
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.
- mrcsharp 1y ago
  It is. But you won't get such an answer from the "important" people because they are busy imposing useless laws every other day. The public is unaware and unwilling to engage in such discussions because there isn't much pain being felt yet from the current structure of the economy.
  - givemeethekeys 1y ago
    If the people who have the most to lose don't think that something is in the national interest, then is it really?
    - xboxnolifes 1y ago
      They're also the people with the most ability to jump ship should something happen.
      - coldtea 1y ago
        aka zero skin in the game, and, worse, a lot to earn by doing favors and pushing for quick profits for their friends in the corporate and finance worlds
        potato3732842 1y ago
        It's the old world old money version of cashing out your tech bucks and retiring to Colorado.
    - mrcsharp 1y ago
      Disagreements about what is of national interest is always going to be a thing. In my opinion, having a country that doesn't have the means to build, at the very least, what is needed to keep its economy going is not in a good spot at all.
    - faichai 1y ago
      "think" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Are the people really thinking? I don't think they are.
      - coldtea 1y ago
        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 and have their salaries, extras, and nice corporate post-politic sinecures whetever their performance. Just see Blair.
  - whiplash451 1y ago
    Like people were not feeling the pain in the first half of the XXth century when we decided to own our nuclear stack? It's a matter of political courage.
- calvinmorrison 1y ago
  For an Island that has been dependent importing most goods for hundreds of years... I don't even think there's much of a merchant marine fleet left in the UK.
  - arlcode 1y ago
    Interesting question. Its plausible that there are not many vessels that are UK flagged anymore. The more interesting question is how many of these are under "control"/influence of domestic operators If required, a flag can be exchanged in a pinch and tax codes /regulations can be adapted to allow/encourage this.
    - noir_lord 1y ago
      Happened during the Falklands War. There are peacetime rules and war time rules, war time rules are best summarised as “government does what it wants and justifies it after the fact”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War_order_of_battle:_British_naval_forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War_order_of_battle:... under “Ships taken from trade”.
      - realityking 1y ago
        I just clicked through to some of the listed ships and it appears they were all flying a British flag in 1982 before being requisitioned. It’s not at all clear to me a government would have that power about a foreign flagged vessel, even if the shipping line owning it might be British.
        RobotToaster 1y ago
        Maybe not legally, but most of the countries used as a flag of convenience are tiny, what could the Marshall islands do about it?
  - dukeyukey 1y ago
    It's about a thousand ships, but realsitically it's very fuzzy, with flags of convenaince and all. And British companies own a _lot_ of ships, just flagged under other countries.
- eru 1y ago
  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.
  - ggm 1y ago
    South Korea is a long way away, if supply chains are contested and there are competing bidders for their outputs. South Korea is far closer to Singapore. "Friends" is a strange concept in national strategic planning. You might ask yourself "just how much are those friends going to come and help when push comes to shove" and look at current politics, and re-assess what has been commonly felt these last 50 years: no prior friend can be assumed to be motivated to still be a friend. Think about Taiwan. All these friends, and now the biggest one says "we think you're too risky. move all that advanced chip making to us, onshore, we'll talk more about how seriously we want to be a friend and defend you after"
    - eru 1y ago
      There's always trade-offs. Even local shipping producers can't magic together a ship in a week. Of course, you can also look for some closer-to-home backup friends. My main point is that close allies (both geographically and in terms of relationship) are about as good as having your own local industry. In a few important cases and areas, having production with friends is better than at home. Mostly because it's harder for local political interests to capture a foreign economy.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - dylan604 1y ago
        > Of course, you can also look for some closer-to-home backup friends. Nobody likes being a back up friend to only be called on when your primary friend is unavailable, or you want to do something your primary friend wouldn't like. Countries make treaties/trade agreements accordingly
- agobineau 1y ago
  australia has almost no fuel refining capacity most of australia has less than 2 weeks of gasoline and imports it on weekly barges from singapore. in the XXIer century some australia cities have run out of gasoline for half a day, an afternoon, a few days https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-15/singapore-bound-duel-tanker-delayed-again-in-tasmania/6621740 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-15/singapore-bound-duel-...
  - oblio 1y ago
    > 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?
    - femtozer 1y ago
      As a french person, it looks weird to me. I would only use it for the very first century: Ier siècle.
    - fmajid 1y ago
      Probably German (Zwanzig Erster)
      - oblio 1y ago
        See, that's the problem with (my) assumptions :-D
  - bgnn 1y ago
    That's unbelievable. A lot of 3rd world countries have their own refineries.. Wow.
  - throwaway290 1y ago
    > most of australia has less than 2 weeks of gasoline and imports it on weekly barges from singapore. And you know how much oil is found in the vast lands of Singapore... That stuff floating to Australia is probably Russian oil https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/nov/09/loophole-russian-sanctions-oil-imported-to-australia https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/nov/09/looph...
- michaelt 1y ago
  If shipbuilding is a strategic national industry, doesn't that also make all the inputs to a shipyard strategic industries? After all, if a war broke out and our normal trading partners weren't willing to sell us ships, presumably they wouldn't sell us steel or engines or ball bearings or paint or radar modules or computer chips or plastics.
  - moomin 1y ago
    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.
    - lukan 1y ago
      I mean, if we are talking about a big war scenario, then simply the distance to Japan would mean Dutch ships are clearly the better choice. Otherwise sure, realistic threat scenarios. But the world is also changing fast. Denmark or Canada did not expected to be militarily threatened by the US some years ago and still this is where we are now.
    - nico_h 1y ago
      If it’s sourced from abroad it has to be shipped (blockades anyone ?) If your usual trading partner is inaccessible for reason X , what are the odds your alternate trading partner is also affected by reason X? Are there geopolitical or national political reasons that partner B might become unavailable or unpalatable at the same time?
      - energy123 1y ago
        Maybe, but it has to be balanced against the economic damage of autarkic policies which sabotages national security in its own way. There's no substitute for a case by case analysis.
    - 1y ago
- expedition32 1y ago
  It's a country that is also a capitalist economy. Ofcourse they can build cargo ships. But those ships will be ten times more expensive than anything you can buy from Korea. Who is going to make up the difference?
  - flir 1y ago
    The idea is that, if it's that important, you ultimately fund it from taxation. It's so important that it's really defence spending.
    - TitaRusell 1y ago
      The UK has been slashing defence spending since WW2. And with reason the USSR lost because they couldn't afford the cold war anymore.
      - nradov 1y ago
        And now the UK has committed to increase defense spending. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8175/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
- mr_toad 1y ago
  The decisive battle of WWII, as far as the defence of Britain was concerned, was fought in the air. Invading an island nation without air superiority is a non-starter. I actually doubt the value of modern navies for anything other than gunboat diplomacy, or coastal patrols these days. I think they’re too vulnerable to things like cruise missiles and drones.
jay_kyburz 1y ago
Every country should be able to defend itself, without reliance on allies, as a national priority. If this means building cars, ships, tanks, and planes, then that infrastructure should be built and maintained at taxpayers expense. Whats more, you need to have market forces within your own country so competition can deliver you the best products. You can't just fund one ship building company, you need to roll the dice on a handful. Every now and then you have to prune back the organizations that are not working, and give a shot to startups to see if they can do better. If you can't tell, I believe in big, transparent, government.
- eru 1y ago
  Who are you to decide these priorities for other people? Don't we have democracy, so that people can make their own choices?
  - jay_kyburz 1y ago
    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 the world now! Our governments seemed to be actively dismantling manufacturing - the information economy was the future for us. Now the world descends into chaos, and it will be very slow and expensive to restart those heavy industries. But actually, I don't really know how expensive it will be to get things started again. Perhaps we can skip tanks and planes and jump right to weaponized satellites and autonomous drones.
    - protocolture 1y ago
      >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.
hypeatei 1y ago
I'm of the opinion that things like shipbuilding don't really matter in times of war for countries with nuclear weapons. There would be dire consequences for anyone invading and/or blockading a nuclear armed country. A lot of people seem to yearn for the "good old days" where we built giant, tangible things that did cool stuff. That's fine, but the "national security" arguments ring hollow as you're basically saying all institutions, intelligence agencies, defense agencies, etc. are asleep at the wheel if it truly is a threat... which I guess is possible but highly unlikely.
- ggm 1y ago
  You seem to think nuclear weapons stop all forms of tension short of nuclear war but the evidence is strong that even nuclear armed parties do things which don't include nuclear weapons. India applies strategic pressures to it's neighbours including ones with nuclear weapons. They're bashing each other with sticks and stones on the border, to avoid pulling nuclear triggers. There was an ad-blue shortage in Australia last year, we have no onshore refinery and got close to running out. The nearest one is Indonesia and we were in a number of trade disputes regarding lumpy skin diseases and cattle and sheep. It only takes one or two sore points for something like "sorry, we sold your ad-blue to somebody else" and the entire mining sector is shut down. British strategic military thinking assumed its role in NATO was unchanging. The re-appraisal post Ukraine has been significant and I am sure it includes waking up the arms manufacturing sector, and the input side to that is heavy metals industry, which has unfortunately fallen in a hole because of under-capitalisation and world pricing and Gupta and the like now "own" the national steel plan to some extent. You would think that kind of thing would have been thought about. Just making trains onshore instead of buying them in from overseas would have possibly demanded continual metals manufacturing and processing capacity, which kept furnaces alight and steel making to the fore.
  - arcanemachiner 1y ago
    For anyone else wondering, "ad-blue" is another term for DEF (diesel exhaust fluid), which is a chemical used to decrease emissions from diesel engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust_fluid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust_fluid
Barrin92 1y ago
>Right now, we're very far from Autarky and we're far too close to total dependency. The biggest problem with this thinking is that nationally mandated production is fundamentally unable to reduce dependency because national economic policy cannot increase aggregate output. That's to say when you politically prioritize to build ships the question always is what you aren't building instead, because all allocation consists of trade-offs. Britain does not have a gigantic army of reserve labour to deploy that's doing nothing. It's a relatively small country compared to its competitors (as is Australia), it has limited capital. To recuperate the costs of a large industry in particular you need to be internationally competitive to export at scale. Is that even achievable and worth it at the cost of any other place you could put that capital? It's actually worrying me quite a bit that people seem to have completely forgotten what a comparative advantage is. Free trade is good because it gets you more stuff, autarky does not necessarily diminish your dependence because you're necessarily getting less. North Korea is very autark and still dependent because it's also poor.
- imtringued 1y ago
  >It's actually worrying me quite a bit that people seem to have completely forgotten what a comparative advantage is. A comparative advantage is a past fixed cost investment whose output has not been consumed in its entirety. Hence comparative advantages are created outcomes and not something you can follow. The reason why a competing nation doesn't build their own industry is that they would have to duplicate the fixed costs of initially starting the industry and it is cheaper to pay only for the ships you need. If the government made the investment anyway, it would now have given its economic potential a concrete form and switching to a different form is expensive. Producing a different commodity requires paying fixed costs again. hnwnce, after the investment there is a comparative advantage to produce commodities whose fixed costs are already paid for. They are literally cheaper to produce than other commodities. Meanwhile if you were to go to the other extreme. What if there was an activity without any fixed costs? The concept of comparative advantage would be meaningless, because switching tasks costs nothing.
- Yokolos 1y ago
  It's worrying to me that the idea of comparative advantage has become such common parlance among non-economists that it's being used to justify everything without any real analysis or justification. It's not a solution for everything and it's not always applicable or relevant. Free trade is good, sure, but that's not the discussion here. It's not about free trade vs no free trade. Nobody posed that question here, so why are you bringing it up as if it's relevant?
protocolture 1y ago
Australias Unofficial naval strategy is "bomb the shit out of scary boats with Growlers". Australias Official naval strategy is "We need more boats for reasons (cough asylum seekers cough), definitely not because it is politically expedient to keep boat builders employed"
- dingaling 1y ago
  Well I doubt they'd be using Growlers, but even if they needed to they cost too much ( $80 million a piece ) to be thrown into modern naval air defences, and don't have the range to be deployed where they could actually reach ships causing trouble.
- rswail 1y ago
  Australia's naval strategy is to defend our sea lanes that we rely on for trade, primarily our trade with our largest customer, which is China. Conveniently, they need what we have, and we want what they make. On the other hand, the primary strategic threat is apparently also China. https://youtu.be/sgspkxfkS4k?si=9n6fTPusYI9jcUhj https://youtu.be/sgspkxfkS4k?si=9n6fTPusYI9jcUhj
madaxe_again 1y ago
I just don’t know that it’s feasible. As the article mentions, the U.K. shipbuilding industry was dependent on cheap, skilled labour. It doesn’t touch upon just how cheap. My ancestors were riveters and boiler fitters in Glasgow from about the 1860s to the 1920s - they lived 30 to a room in tenements, three generations atop on another, and had to start work aged 5 or 6 to prevent the family from falling into destitution. The economics essentially demanded that you crank out descendants, as only by pooling a number of incomes could you survive. Everybody had horrific injuries of one variety or another. Most died before reaching 50. The other thing that the article elides is just how much that workforce was shattered by the wars - an awful lot of Glaswegian and other shipbuilders signed up for the navy, as it was a much better opportunity than just making the boats - and proceeded to die at sea in droves. Their families did not receive compensation or their pay more often than not, as it was considered to be bad for morale to say a ship had been lost, and instead all aboard would be classed as missing or as deserters, and when they did finally say “yes, this ship was lost” 15 years after each war, it was usually far too late to be of any use. Anyway. I just can’t see the working classes or international human rights organisations being willing to do the same again.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  >My ancestors were riveters and boiler fitters in Glasgow from about the 1860s to the 1920s - they lived 30 to a room in tenements, three generations atop on another, and had to start work aged 5 or 6 to prevent the family from falling into destitution. The economics essentially demanded that you crank out descendants, as only by pooling a number of incomes could you survive. Everybody had horrific injuries of one variety or another. Most died before reaching 50. So basically the same situation as the prior generations of peasants toiling away to pay their taxes to the lord.
  - madaxe_again 1y ago
    Actually, much, much worse. Before Glasgow, my family were crofters in the highlands - and by all accounts had a pretty good laird - but then the clearances happened, and everyone was condemned to the dark, satanic mills.
coldtea 1y ago
>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. Sometimes the time to fix a thing in general (nevermind the "best time") has come and gone, and the rest is wishful thinking and platitudes like "the next best time is now".
- sachahjkl 1y ago
  yeah, you're right, better to sit on your hands and just sit it out idly
  - coldtea 1y ago
    yeah, you're right, best to be delusional that you can fix something when you can't, instead of realistically evaluating your actual situation and finding a pragmatic solution see how such dismissal can cut both ways?
- MrsPeaches 1y ago
  The UK is actually doing something(ish) about it now. Innovate UK (the UK’s public innovation funding) recently had a bid out for maritime R&D but with a focus on clean tech: https://iuk-business-connect.org.uk/opportunities/clean-maritime-demonstration-competition/ https://iuk-business-connect.org.uk/opportunities/clean-mari... Obviously, this is not going to make up for the loss of the broader ship building industry, but it does show that the UK is thinking about maritime technology as a key strategic area.
  - pjc50 1y ago
    In my most cynical moments I think if the UK actually wants to build ships the best thing to do might be to close down the existing shipbuilding industry first, and start a newer more efficient one from scratch. Per Ferguson Marine, do you want to prop up a dying industry or achieve usable ships? What's the actual priority?
  - dgroshev 1y ago
    To add to that, we just won a £10bn contract to build Type 26 anti-sub frigates for Norway https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr5rgdpvn63o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr5rgdpvn63o
pjc50 1y ago
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 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 the "right thing", maintaining the last gasp of a dying shipbuilding industry, but it turns out that part of the reason they were dying was not actually being able to build ships on time and under budget. How do you tell the difference between "maintaining a strategic industry" and "throwing taxpayer money into a lossmaking business with nothing to show for it"? > In the immediate short term, buying hulls and laying them up might be wise By "wise" you mean "expensive", right? Ships of all sizes require continuous maintenance to remain seaworthy.
- cassepipe 1y ago
  I have no real opinion on this debate but wouldn't the person you are responding to say that the explosion of budget and lengthening of timeline is exactly because those capacities had been abandoned ? But I agree it's a good question, how much inefficiency can you accept to revive a branch of industry, how long do you have to wait before you decide to throw the towel ?
- deadbunny 1y ago
  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.
  - 1y ago
scott_w 1y ago
> Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. So the simple truth is you can almost never "ignore the cost" because that cost must be borne somewhere. And there's always someone that's considered "national-strategic" by someone. Hell, I recall my dad being enraged that our "blue" passports are now manufactured in Poland under contract from a French company. What actually happened is De La Rue took the piss on their contract bid thinking they would just rinse the taxpayer. Having the taxpayer there to bail out a failing shipyard blunts the incentive to modernise which, as we can see from the article, was barely there to begin with. Should the taxpayer sit there with effectively unlimited liability to build these ships? Should that come at the expense of, say, funding for the NHS? Housebuilding? Fixing our crumbling prison system? Modernising our water infrastructure?
- potato3732842 1y ago
  Society can't ignore the cost. But the bad faith peddlers of the costs sure can. You can't go an hour without some HN comment just hand waving away the costs of some regulation, some additional labor overhead, some procedural change, some tweak of input sourcing or other reduction of outputs relative to inputs as being "amortized" over the course of whatever to much applause from the comment section. And yet these same people are smart enough to recognize these sorts of dishonest "the solution to pollution is dilution" type arguments when applied in other contexts. It ought to make you wonder how much malice is sailing under the flag of ignorance.
  - scott_w 1y ago
    > You can't go an hour without some HN comment just hand waving away the costs of some regulation I don't see what regulation has to do with (effectively) nationalising the entire shipbuilding industry. When I say "cost" I literally mean the financial cost to the Exchequer.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      Regulation was just one example. Could be any sort of TPS report or other overhead type crap.
fmajid 1y ago
The UK imports half its food, and was almost starved into submission by Nazi U-boats during WW2,, so you’d think they would know this, but laissez-faire ideology is strong in the ruling class.
- tekla 1y ago
  The UK was never even near starvation levels during WW2. Bread, Vegetables and Fish were never even rationed.
- tim333 1y ago
  We import a lot by value but less so by calories. We could probably get by on domestic bread and potatoes if blockaded but the oranges, bananas and tuna fish would be in short supply.
graemep 1y ago
> Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. The UK does not even make any effort. Look at the level of dependency on US cloud providers to deliver basic government services. To be fair, the UK is no worse than the rest of Europe (some small gestures and exceptions aside) in this, but that only makes the overall situation worse. Successive British governments have not really thought this through, and what dependencies are a problem. Again, not the only country that has done that, but, again, that does not help solve the problem. > There is Autarky, and there is total dependency, and there is a massive road in-between. Right now, we're very far from Autarky and we're far too close to total dependency. Absolutely, but people are not aware of it, politicians do not care, the the ruling class are declinist.
flir 1y ago
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.
- lb1lf 1y ago
  That is a fair point, but do keep in mind that the lower in the stack you come, the more options for sourcing you (generally) have. Say, those fancy chips going into the ship's targeting radar may all be designed in a country or two, fabbed in Taiwan using Dutch equipment, whereas the steel you construct the hull with can come from anywhere - at my employer we mostly bought steel from Eastern Ukraine until a couple of years ago; after a brief hiccup we now get it from Turkey and Brazil, mostly - but China, South Korea, Germany or India, for instance, can supply it, too.
loglog 1y ago
1. The article states "In 2023, the UK produced no commercial ships at all." It does not consider military ship building, which still exists in the UK. 2. Given the scale of problems described in the article, it is probably easier to restart a civilian ship building industry from scratch than to expand it from the previously existing.

by ggm 1y ago

jacquesm 1y ago

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.

mrcsharp 1y ago
It is. But you won't get such an answer from the "important" people because they are busy imposing useless laws every other day. The public is unaware and unwilling to engage in such discussions because there isn't much pain being felt yet from the current structure of the economy.
- givemeethekeys 1y ago
  If the people who have the most to lose don't think that something is in the national interest, then is it really?
  - xboxnolifes 1y ago
    They're also the people with the most ability to jump ship should something happen.
    - coldtea 1y ago
      aka zero skin in the game, and, worse, a lot to earn by doing favors and pushing for quick profits for their friends in the corporate and finance worlds
      - potato3732842 1y ago
        It's the old world old money version of cashing out your tech bucks and retiring to Colorado.
  - mrcsharp 1y ago
    Disagreements about what is of national interest is always going to be a thing. In my opinion, having a country that doesn't have the means to build, at the very least, what is needed to keep its economy going is not in a good spot at all.
  - faichai 1y ago
    "think" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Are the people really thinking? I don't think they are.
    - coldtea 1y ago
      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 and have their salaries, extras, and nice corporate post-politic sinecures whetever their performance. Just see Blair.
- whiplash451 1y ago
  Like people were not feeling the pain in the first half of the XXth century when we decided to own our nuclear stack? It's a matter of political courage.
calvinmorrison 1y ago
For an Island that has been dependent importing most goods for hundreds of years... I don't even think there's much of a merchant marine fleet left in the UK.
- arlcode 1y ago
  Interesting question. Its plausible that there are not many vessels that are UK flagged anymore. The more interesting question is how many of these are under "control"/influence of domestic operators If required, a flag can be exchanged in a pinch and tax codes /regulations can be adapted to allow/encourage this.
  - noir_lord 1y ago
    Happened during the Falklands War. There are peacetime rules and war time rules, war time rules are best summarised as “government does what it wants and justifies it after the fact”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War_order_of_battle:_British_naval_forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War_order_of_battle:... under “Ships taken from trade”.
    - realityking 1y ago
      I just clicked through to some of the listed ships and it appears they were all flying a British flag in 1982 before being requisitioned. It’s not at all clear to me a government would have that power about a foreign flagged vessel, even if the shipping line owning it might be British.
      - RobotToaster 1y ago
        Maybe not legally, but most of the countries used as a flag of convenience are tiny, what could the Marshall islands do about it?
- dukeyukey 1y ago
  It's about a thousand ships, but realsitically it's very fuzzy, with flags of convenaince and all. And British companies own a _lot_ of ships, just flagged under other countries.
eru 1y ago
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.
- ggm 1y ago
  South Korea is a long way away, if supply chains are contested and there are competing bidders for their outputs. South Korea is far closer to Singapore. "Friends" is a strange concept in national strategic planning. You might ask yourself "just how much are those friends going to come and help when push comes to shove" and look at current politics, and re-assess what has been commonly felt these last 50 years: no prior friend can be assumed to be motivated to still be a friend. Think about Taiwan. All these friends, and now the biggest one says "we think you're too risky. move all that advanced chip making to us, onshore, we'll talk more about how seriously we want to be a friend and defend you after"
  - eru 1y ago
    There's always trade-offs. Even local shipping producers can't magic together a ship in a week. Of course, you can also look for some closer-to-home backup friends. My main point is that close allies (both geographically and in terms of relationship) are about as good as having your own local industry. In a few important cases and areas, having production with friends is better than at home. Mostly because it's harder for local political interests to capture a foreign economy.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - dylan604 1y ago
      > Of course, you can also look for some closer-to-home backup friends. Nobody likes being a back up friend to only be called on when your primary friend is unavailable, or you want to do something your primary friend wouldn't like. Countries make treaties/trade agreements accordingly
agobineau 1y ago
australia has almost no fuel refining capacity most of australia has less than 2 weeks of gasoline and imports it on weekly barges from singapore. in the XXIer century some australia cities have run out of gasoline for half a day, an afternoon, a few days https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-15/singapore-bound-duel-tanker-delayed-again-in-tasmania/6621740 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-15/singapore-bound-duel-...
- oblio 1y ago
  > 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?
  - femtozer 1y ago
    As a french person, it looks weird to me. I would only use it for the very first century: Ier siècle.
  - fmajid 1y ago
    Probably German (Zwanzig Erster)
    - oblio 1y ago
      See, that's the problem with (my) assumptions :-D
- bgnn 1y ago
  That's unbelievable. A lot of 3rd world countries have their own refineries.. Wow.
- throwaway290 1y ago
  > most of australia has less than 2 weeks of gasoline and imports it on weekly barges from singapore. And you know how much oil is found in the vast lands of Singapore... That stuff floating to Australia is probably Russian oil https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/nov/09/loophole-russian-sanctions-oil-imported-to-australia https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/nov/09/looph...
michaelt 1y ago
If shipbuilding is a strategic national industry, doesn't that also make all the inputs to a shipyard strategic industries? After all, if a war broke out and our normal trading partners weren't willing to sell us ships, presumably they wouldn't sell us steel or engines or ball bearings or paint or radar modules or computer chips or plastics.
- moomin 1y ago
  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.
  - lukan 1y ago
    I mean, if we are talking about a big war scenario, then simply the distance to Japan would mean Dutch ships are clearly the better choice. Otherwise sure, realistic threat scenarios. But the world is also changing fast. Denmark or Canada did not expected to be militarily threatened by the US some years ago and still this is where we are now.
  - nico_h 1y ago
    If it’s sourced from abroad it has to be shipped (blockades anyone ?) If your usual trading partner is inaccessible for reason X , what are the odds your alternate trading partner is also affected by reason X? Are there geopolitical or national political reasons that partner B might become unavailable or unpalatable at the same time?
    - energy123 1y ago
      Maybe, but it has to be balanced against the economic damage of autarkic policies which sabotages national security in its own way. There's no substitute for a case by case analysis.
  - 1y ago
expedition32 1y ago
It's a country that is also a capitalist economy. Ofcourse they can build cargo ships. But those ships will be ten times more expensive than anything you can buy from Korea. Who is going to make up the difference?
- flir 1y ago
  The idea is that, if it's that important, you ultimately fund it from taxation. It's so important that it's really defence spending.
  - TitaRusell 1y ago
    The UK has been slashing defence spending since WW2. And with reason the USSR lost because they couldn't afford the cold war anymore.
    - nradov 1y ago
      And now the UK has committed to increase defense spending. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8175/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
mr_toad 1y ago
The decisive battle of WWII, as far as the defence of Britain was concerned, was fought in the air. Invading an island nation without air superiority is a non-starter. I actually doubt the value of modern navies for anything other than gunboat diplomacy, or coastal patrols these days. I think they’re too vulnerable to things like cruise missiles and drones.

jay_kyburz 1y ago

Every country should be able to defend itself, without reliance on allies, as a national priority. If this means building cars, ships, tanks, and planes, then that infrastructure should be built and maintained at taxpayers expense. Whats more, you need to have market forces within your own country so competition can deliver you the best products. You can't just fund one ship building company, you need to roll the dice on a handful. Every now and then you have to prune back the organizations that are not working, and give a shot to startups to see if they can do better. If you can't tell, I believe in big, transparent, government.

eru 1y ago
Who are you to decide these priorities for other people? Don't we have democracy, so that people can make their own choices?
- jay_kyburz 1y ago
  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 the world now! Our governments seemed to be actively dismantling manufacturing - the information economy was the future for us. Now the world descends into chaos, and it will be very slow and expensive to restart those heavy industries. But actually, I don't really know how expensive it will be to get things started again. Perhaps we can skip tanks and planes and jump right to weaponized satellites and autonomous drones.
  - protocolture 1y ago
    >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.

hypeatei 1y ago

I'm of the opinion that things like shipbuilding don't really matter in times of war for countries with nuclear weapons. There would be dire consequences for anyone invading and/or blockading a nuclear armed country. A lot of people seem to yearn for the "good old days" where we built giant, tangible things that did cool stuff. That's fine, but the "national security" arguments ring hollow as you're basically saying all institutions, intelligence agencies, defense agencies, etc. are asleep at the wheel if it truly is a threat... which I guess is possible but highly unlikely.

ggm 1y ago
You seem to think nuclear weapons stop all forms of tension short of nuclear war but the evidence is strong that even nuclear armed parties do things which don't include nuclear weapons. India applies strategic pressures to it's neighbours including ones with nuclear weapons. They're bashing each other with sticks and stones on the border, to avoid pulling nuclear triggers. There was an ad-blue shortage in Australia last year, we have no onshore refinery and got close to running out. The nearest one is Indonesia and we were in a number of trade disputes regarding lumpy skin diseases and cattle and sheep. It only takes one or two sore points for something like "sorry, we sold your ad-blue to somebody else" and the entire mining sector is shut down. British strategic military thinking assumed its role in NATO was unchanging. The re-appraisal post Ukraine has been significant and I am sure it includes waking up the arms manufacturing sector, and the input side to that is heavy metals industry, which has unfortunately fallen in a hole because of under-capitalisation and world pricing and Gupta and the like now "own" the national steel plan to some extent. You would think that kind of thing would have been thought about. Just making trains onshore instead of buying them in from overseas would have possibly demanded continual metals manufacturing and processing capacity, which kept furnaces alight and steel making to the fore.
- arcanemachiner 1y ago
  For anyone else wondering, "ad-blue" is another term for DEF (diesel exhaust fluid), which is a chemical used to decrease emissions from diesel engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust_fluid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust_fluid

Barrin92 1y ago

>Right now, we're very far from Autarky and we're far too close to total dependency. The biggest problem with this thinking is that nationally mandated production is fundamentally unable to reduce dependency because national economic policy cannot increase aggregate output. That's to say when you politically prioritize to build ships the question always is what you aren't building instead, because all allocation consists of trade-offs. Britain does not have a gigantic army of reserve labour to deploy that's doing nothing. It's a relatively small country compared to its competitors (as is Australia), it has limited capital. To recuperate the costs of a large industry in particular you need to be internationally competitive to export at scale. Is that even achievable and worth it at the cost of any other place you could put that capital? It's actually worrying me quite a bit that people seem to have completely forgotten what a comparative advantage is. Free trade is good because it gets you more stuff, autarky does not necessarily diminish your dependence because you're necessarily getting less. North Korea is very autark and still dependent because it's also poor.

imtringued 1y ago
>It's actually worrying me quite a bit that people seem to have completely forgotten what a comparative advantage is. A comparative advantage is a past fixed cost investment whose output has not been consumed in its entirety. Hence comparative advantages are created outcomes and not something you can follow. The reason why a competing nation doesn't build their own industry is that they would have to duplicate the fixed costs of initially starting the industry and it is cheaper to pay only for the ships you need. If the government made the investment anyway, it would now have given its economic potential a concrete form and switching to a different form is expensive. Producing a different commodity requires paying fixed costs again. hnwnce, after the investment there is a comparative advantage to produce commodities whose fixed costs are already paid for. They are literally cheaper to produce than other commodities. Meanwhile if you were to go to the other extreme. What if there was an activity without any fixed costs? The concept of comparative advantage would be meaningless, because switching tasks costs nothing.
Yokolos 1y ago
It's worrying to me that the idea of comparative advantage has become such common parlance among non-economists that it's being used to justify everything without any real analysis or justification. It's not a solution for everything and it's not always applicable or relevant. Free trade is good, sure, but that's not the discussion here. It's not about free trade vs no free trade. Nobody posed that question here, so why are you bringing it up as if it's relevant?

protocolture 1y ago

Australias Unofficial naval strategy is "bomb the shit out of scary boats with Growlers". Australias Official naval strategy is "We need more boats for reasons (cough asylum seekers cough), definitely not because it is politically expedient to keep boat builders employed"

dingaling 1y ago
Well I doubt they'd be using Growlers, but even if they needed to they cost too much ( $80 million a piece ) to be thrown into modern naval air defences, and don't have the range to be deployed where they could actually reach ships causing trouble.
rswail 1y ago
Australia's naval strategy is to defend our sea lanes that we rely on for trade, primarily our trade with our largest customer, which is China. Conveniently, they need what we have, and we want what they make. On the other hand, the primary strategic threat is apparently also China. https://youtu.be/sgspkxfkS4k?si=9n6fTPusYI9jcUhj https://youtu.be/sgspkxfkS4k?si=9n6fTPusYI9jcUhj

madaxe_again 1y ago

I just don’t know that it’s feasible. As the article mentions, the U.K. shipbuilding industry was dependent on cheap, skilled labour. It doesn’t touch upon just how cheap. My ancestors were riveters and boiler fitters in Glasgow from about the 1860s to the 1920s - they lived 30 to a room in tenements, three generations atop on another, and had to start work aged 5 or 6 to prevent the family from falling into destitution. The economics essentially demanded that you crank out descendants, as only by pooling a number of incomes could you survive. Everybody had horrific injuries of one variety or another. Most died before reaching 50. The other thing that the article elides is just how much that workforce was shattered by the wars - an awful lot of Glaswegian and other shipbuilders signed up for the navy, as it was a much better opportunity than just making the boats - and proceeded to die at sea in droves. Their families did not receive compensation or their pay more often than not, as it was considered to be bad for morale to say a ship had been lost, and instead all aboard would be classed as missing or as deserters, and when they did finally say “yes, this ship was lost” 15 years after each war, it was usually far too late to be of any use. Anyway. I just can’t see the working classes or international human rights organisations being willing to do the same again.

potato3732842 1y ago
>My ancestors were riveters and boiler fitters in Glasgow from about the 1860s to the 1920s - they lived 30 to a room in tenements, three generations atop on another, and had to start work aged 5 or 6 to prevent the family from falling into destitution. The economics essentially demanded that you crank out descendants, as only by pooling a number of incomes could you survive. Everybody had horrific injuries of one variety or another. Most died before reaching 50. So basically the same situation as the prior generations of peasants toiling away to pay their taxes to the lord.
- madaxe_again 1y ago
  Actually, much, much worse. Before Glasgow, my family were crofters in the highlands - and by all accounts had a pretty good laird - but then the clearances happened, and everyone was condemned to the dark, satanic mills.

coldtea 1y ago

>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. Sometimes the time to fix a thing in general (nevermind the "best time") has come and gone, and the rest is wishful thinking and platitudes like "the next best time is now".

sachahjkl 1y ago
yeah, you're right, better to sit on your hands and just sit it out idly
- coldtea 1y ago
  yeah, you're right, best to be delusional that you can fix something when you can't, instead of realistically evaluating your actual situation and finding a pragmatic solution see how such dismissal can cut both ways?
MrsPeaches 1y ago
The UK is actually doing something(ish) about it now. Innovate UK (the UK’s public innovation funding) recently had a bid out for maritime R&D but with a focus on clean tech: https://iuk-business-connect.org.uk/opportunities/clean-maritime-demonstration-competition/ https://iuk-business-connect.org.uk/opportunities/clean-mari... Obviously, this is not going to make up for the loss of the broader ship building industry, but it does show that the UK is thinking about maritime technology as a key strategic area.
- pjc50 1y ago
  In my most cynical moments I think if the UK actually wants to build ships the best thing to do might be to close down the existing shipbuilding industry first, and start a newer more efficient one from scratch. Per Ferguson Marine, do you want to prop up a dying industry or achieve usable ships? What's the actual priority?
- dgroshev 1y ago
  To add to that, we just won a £10bn contract to build Type 26 anti-sub frigates for Norway https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr5rgdpvn63o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr5rgdpvn63o

pjc50 1y ago

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 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 the "right thing", maintaining the last gasp of a dying shipbuilding industry, but it turns out that part of the reason they were dying was not actually being able to build ships on time and under budget. How do you tell the difference between "maintaining a strategic industry" and "throwing taxpayer money into a lossmaking business with nothing to show for it"? > In the immediate short term, buying hulls and laying them up might be wise By "wise" you mean "expensive", right? Ships of all sizes require continuous maintenance to remain seaworthy.

cassepipe 1y ago
I have no real opinion on this debate but wouldn't the person you are responding to say that the explosion of budget and lengthening of timeline is exactly because those capacities had been abandoned ? But I agree it's a good question, how much inefficiency can you accept to revive a branch of industry, how long do you have to wait before you decide to throw the towel ?
deadbunny 1y ago
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.
- 1y ago

scott_w 1y ago

> Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. So the simple truth is you can almost never "ignore the cost" because that cost must be borne somewhere. And there's always someone that's considered "national-strategic" by someone. Hell, I recall my dad being enraged that our "blue" passports are now manufactured in Poland under contract from a French company. What actually happened is De La Rue took the piss on their contract bid thinking they would just rinse the taxpayer. Having the taxpayer there to bail out a failing shipyard blunts the incentive to modernise which, as we can see from the article, was barely there to begin with. Should the taxpayer sit there with effectively unlimited liability to build these ships? Should that come at the expense of, say, funding for the NHS? Housebuilding? Fixing our crumbling prison system? Modernising our water infrastructure?

potato3732842 1y ago
Society can't ignore the cost. But the bad faith peddlers of the costs sure can. You can't go an hour without some HN comment just hand waving away the costs of some regulation, some additional labor overhead, some procedural change, some tweak of input sourcing or other reduction of outputs relative to inputs as being "amortized" over the course of whatever to much applause from the comment section. And yet these same people are smart enough to recognize these sorts of dishonest "the solution to pollution is dilution" type arguments when applied in other contexts. It ought to make you wonder how much malice is sailing under the flag of ignorance.
- scott_w 1y ago
  > You can't go an hour without some HN comment just hand waving away the costs of some regulation I don't see what regulation has to do with (effectively) nationalising the entire shipbuilding industry. When I say "cost" I literally mean the financial cost to the Exchequer.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    Regulation was just one example. Could be any sort of TPS report or other overhead type crap.

fmajid 1y ago

The UK imports half its food, and was almost starved into submission by Nazi U-boats during WW2,, so you’d think they would know this, but laissez-faire ideology is strong in the ruling class.

tekla 1y ago
The UK was never even near starvation levels during WW2. Bread, Vegetables and Fish were never even rationed.
tim333 1y ago
We import a lot by value but less so by calories. We could probably get by on domestic bread and potatoes if blockaded but the oranges, bananas and tuna fish would be in short supply.

graemep 1y ago

> Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. The UK does not even make any effort. Look at the level of dependency on US cloud providers to deliver basic government services. To be fair, the UK is no worse than the rest of Europe (some small gestures and exceptions aside) in this, but that only makes the overall situation worse. Successive British governments have not really thought this through, and what dependencies are a problem. Again, not the only country that has done that, but, again, that does not help solve the problem. > There is Autarky, and there is total dependency, and there is a massive road in-between. Right now, we're very far from Autarky and we're far too close to total dependency. Absolutely, but people are not aware of it, politicians do not care, the the ruling class are declinist.

flir 1y ago

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.

lb1lf 1y ago
That is a fair point, but do keep in mind that the lower in the stack you come, the more options for sourcing you (generally) have. Say, those fancy chips going into the ship's targeting radar may all be designed in a country or two, fabbed in Taiwan using Dutch equipment, whereas the steel you construct the hull with can come from anywhere - at my employer we mostly bought steel from Eastern Ukraine until a couple of years ago; after a brief hiccup we now get it from Turkey and Brazil, mostly - but China, South Korea, Germany or India, for instance, can supply it, too.

loglog 1y ago

1. The article states "In 2023, the UK produced no commercial ships at all." It does not consider military ship building, which still exists in the UK. 2. Given the scale of problems described in the article, it is probably easier to restart a civilian ship building industry from scratch than to expand it from the previously existing.