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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 an

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
  - Kubuxu 1y ago
    And DEF is ~33% urea in water.
- devilbunny 1y ago
  The purpose of diesel exhaust fluid is to decrease emissions, right? It’s not actually needed for engines to work. So in the case of something like the mining industry, crucial to the national economy, the government can just pass a temporary waiver. Or am I missing something?
palmotea 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. The flaw in that annoyingly common logic is 1) countries are very reluctant to use nuclear weapons, and 2) any kind of nuclear escalation is an instant loss for your own side. I personally don't think any country would resort to nuclear weapons in the case of an invasion or blockade, and certainly not a democratic one [1]. They may threaten, but I don't think they'd actually put that gun to their own head and pull the trigger. [1] An autocratic one may use them when the leader is close to defeat as one last "f*ck you", because he doesn't serve his people, they serve him.
- rhubarbtree 1y ago
  We may add to that - the UK’s nuclear deterrent is onboard submarines.
  - jack_tripper 1y ago
    That's also my thinking that nullifies a lot of the discussion here. Like why would anyone start a naval beef with the UK, given the UK's nuclear submarine fleet?
    - XorNot 1y ago
      It's not about starting a direct conflict, it's that blockading it can be done at a distance rather easily. If ships can't get to the UK, or the foreign shipyards reduced to rubble - or outbid - then it's more effective and cost efficient then any direct kinetic action.
      - jack_tripper 1y ago
        Submarine fleets will torpedo your blockade. No need to fire nukes.
        1y ago
purple_turtle 1y ago
Having nuclear weapons does not give you immunity to all threats. Quite recently we had a case of nuclear state being partially occupied by a state without nuclear weapons. And even in that case use of nuclear weapons would be unacceptable escalation and they used regular army to (mostly) kick them out and carry on with their earlier invasion on other parts of the front. (I am speaking about Kursk if anyone is confused) Use of nuclear weapons when you are mildly threatened is not viable. In the same way as responding to a pickpockets with an artillery barrage is not viable. "We do not need police as we have an artillery" is equivalent of "there is no need for any other weapons if you have nukes".
- bootsmann 1y ago
  To be fair, the credibility of the Russian nuclear stack is questionable at this point. Its unclear how much capacity survived the past 30 years of graft. We have developed nations struggling to maintain theirs without layers of blatant corruption weaved into the process.
  - gambiting 1y ago
    Even if so, I don't think anyone doubts that they do have functional nuclear weapons. Maybe not all 5000 of them, but definitely enough to use them if they want to. I think the whole narrative of "well maybe Russian nukes don't actually work" is unhelpful - if they wanted to use nuclear weapons they would and the weapons used would work. I think people sometimes think Russia is North Korea experimenting with sticks to make fire(and even they have managed to get something working) - despite the massive corruption their nuclear industry and the engineering corps are functional and it's in my mind without a doubt that there is a stockpile of weapons which would work if needed. Russia is just not suicidal enough to actually use them in the current conflict, luckily.
    - varjag 1y ago
      While I generally agree with your point presenting Russia as a decision making entity is dangerously misleading. You're not dealing with democracy or even 1970s committee-run USSR anymore. Sure Putin has broad support and a number of companions but he remains unilateral, undisputed, unchallenged decision maker. Assuming otherwise brings you back into the fold of rational actor argument which has proven a fallacy for some time now. Yes Putin is not suicidal today, although the chances he'll outlive total retaliation strike. But he may feel differently tomorrow, waking up in a bad mood.
gambiting 1y ago
>>There would be dire consequences for anyone invading and/or blockading a nuclear armed country. Just a reminder that Ukraine is currently at war with nuclear equipped Russia and it could absolutely use more ships, more tanks, more aircraft, more bombs, more guns, more drones and everything else that forms traditional warfare. It's clearly not like countries will immediately go from zero to nuclear weapons in any conflict.
vintermann 1y ago
Bah, I'm of the opinion that if the intelligence agencies were asleep at the wheel, that might well be an improvement. But I do think that you're right in that the time of the frigate and aircraft carrier is over, and we'll all more likely to die either from a nuclear missile or from a 50 gram autonomous drone. I agree: the national security argument is hollow. There are other reasons to build ships though, and some degree of self-sufficiency is always sensible.
- energy123 1y ago
  Attack drones aren't that useful if the two countries are far apart. Consider the 12 Day War between Israel-Iran. Iran's Shahed drones weren't useful, because the slow travel speeds and the long distance meant that Israel could shoot them down at a leisurely pace while they closed the gap. So even their purpose as a saturation attack was not met. But in the Ukraine-Russia war, Iran's Shahed drones, which are being manufactured by Russia with small adjustments, are proving useful, because they're close, so saturation attacks can actually work. For the US's power projection into the Pacific, due to modern SIGINT capabilities, aircraft carriers with stealth bombers are even stronger than 20 years ago due to being able to put those JDAMs onto an actually valuable target. It's basically the power of Zeus, to kill whatever you want whenever you want, unlike in the Vietnam era where you have to carpet bomb everything.
  - vintermann 1y ago
    All you need to do is to smuggle in a little box. Ukraine already did it in Russia.
    - energy123 1y ago
      Granted that my comment was an over-simplification. Israel did get use from reconnaissance Hermes drones in the 12 Day War, possibly launched from Azerbaijan, for another example to add to the list. But as a broad gesture I believe the sentiment is correct. Strategic depth shifts the utility from saturation with attack drones and SRBMs, like what Russia is doing to Ukraine, and what Iran couldn't replicate with MRBMs due to the distance ... to the classic F16 missile trucks to deliver JDAMs with F35s for SEAD.
barrkel 1y ago
Direct kinetic war between nuclear powers is pretty much unthinkable - mutual annihilation if either core territory is threatened. Instead, wars happen through proxies or direct attacks on non-nuclear powers, and then you need the ability to project power short of a nuclear response. Russia can't prevent aid to Ukraine with nuclear blackmail. The US can't defend Taiwan without ships - it can't use nuclear blackmail itself. And if it doesn't defend Taiwan, not only is Western prosperity threatened, but the entire structure of allies that the US built after WW2 crumbles into a chaos of small parties more easily picked apart.
- dgroshev 1y ago
  We just had a direct kinetic war between nuclear powers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India–Pakistan_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India–Pakistan_conflict
- energy123 1y ago
  Pursuing total defeat is unthinkable, bu pursuing limited gains with clear signalling is plausible, and it's happened a few times against nuclear powers, like Yom Kippur War.
energy123 1y ago
Nuclear weapons are overrated. Multiple countries already invaded a nuclear power (1973 Yom Kippur War) and nothing happened. If Egypt wasn't afraid of nukes, what makes you so confident that your future enemy will be? It's an empathy gap. You are rightly cautious of nukes, but you then project that mindset onto belligerents, which is the mistake. A very important rule in strategic planning is to avoid projecting your own calculations onto the enemy. Nuclear powers, like all states, need to meet the pacing challenge and be capable of winning, or at least have enough asymmetric capabilities to force a frozen conflict if necessary.
tim333 1y ago
Even without nuclear weapons, shipping seems quite vulnerable to naval drones and cruise missiles these days.

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
- Kubuxu 1y ago
  And DEF is ~33% urea in water.
devilbunny 1y ago
The purpose of diesel exhaust fluid is to decrease emissions, right? It’s not actually needed for engines to work. So in the case of something like the mining industry, crucial to the national economy, the government can just pass a temporary waiver. Or am I missing something?

palmotea 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. The flaw in that annoyingly common logic is 1) countries are very reluctant to use nuclear weapons, and 2) any kind of nuclear escalation is an instant loss for your own side. I personally don't think any country would resort to nuclear weapons in the case of an invasion or blockade, and certainly not a democratic one [1]. They may threaten, but I don't think they'd actually put that gun to their own head and pull the trigger. [1] An autocratic one may use them when the leader is close to defeat as one last "f*ck you", because he doesn't serve his people, they serve him.

rhubarbtree 1y ago
We may add to that - the UK’s nuclear deterrent is onboard submarines.
- jack_tripper 1y ago
  That's also my thinking that nullifies a lot of the discussion here. Like why would anyone start a naval beef with the UK, given the UK's nuclear submarine fleet?
  - XorNot 1y ago
    It's not about starting a direct conflict, it's that blockading it can be done at a distance rather easily. If ships can't get to the UK, or the foreign shipyards reduced to rubble - or outbid - then it's more effective and cost efficient then any direct kinetic action.
    - jack_tripper 1y ago
      Submarine fleets will torpedo your blockade. No need to fire nukes.
      - 1y ago

purple_turtle 1y ago

Having nuclear weapons does not give you immunity to all threats. Quite recently we had a case of nuclear state being partially occupied by a state without nuclear weapons. And even in that case use of nuclear weapons would be unacceptable escalation and they used regular army to (mostly) kick them out and carry on with their earlier invasion on other parts of the front. (I am speaking about Kursk if anyone is confused) Use of nuclear weapons when you are mildly threatened is not viable. In the same way as responding to a pickpockets with an artillery barrage is not viable. "We do not need police as we have an artillery" is equivalent of "there is no need for any other weapons if you have nukes".

bootsmann 1y ago
To be fair, the credibility of the Russian nuclear stack is questionable at this point. Its unclear how much capacity survived the past 30 years of graft. We have developed nations struggling to maintain theirs without layers of blatant corruption weaved into the process.
- gambiting 1y ago
  Even if so, I don't think anyone doubts that they do have functional nuclear weapons. Maybe not all 5000 of them, but definitely enough to use them if they want to. I think the whole narrative of "well maybe Russian nukes don't actually work" is unhelpful - if they wanted to use nuclear weapons they would and the weapons used would work. I think people sometimes think Russia is North Korea experimenting with sticks to make fire(and even they have managed to get something working) - despite the massive corruption their nuclear industry and the engineering corps are functional and it's in my mind without a doubt that there is a stockpile of weapons which would work if needed. Russia is just not suicidal enough to actually use them in the current conflict, luckily.
  - varjag 1y ago
    While I generally agree with your point presenting Russia as a decision making entity is dangerously misleading. You're not dealing with democracy or even 1970s committee-run USSR anymore. Sure Putin has broad support and a number of companions but he remains unilateral, undisputed, unchallenged decision maker. Assuming otherwise brings you back into the fold of rational actor argument which has proven a fallacy for some time now. Yes Putin is not suicidal today, although the chances he'll outlive total retaliation strike. But he may feel differently tomorrow, waking up in a bad mood.

gambiting 1y ago

>>There would be dire consequences for anyone invading and/or blockading a nuclear armed country. Just a reminder that Ukraine is currently at war with nuclear equipped Russia and it could absolutely use more ships, more tanks, more aircraft, more bombs, more guns, more drones and everything else that forms traditional warfare. It's clearly not like countries will immediately go from zero to nuclear weapons in any conflict.

vintermann 1y ago

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

energy123 1y ago
Attack drones aren't that useful if the two countries are far apart. Consider the 12 Day War between Israel-Iran. Iran's Shahed drones weren't useful, because the slow travel speeds and the long distance meant that Israel could shoot them down at a leisurely pace while they closed the gap. So even their purpose as a saturation attack was not met. But in the Ukraine-Russia war, Iran's Shahed drones, which are being manufactured by Russia with small adjustments, are proving useful, because they're close, so saturation attacks can actually work. For the US's power projection into the Pacific, due to modern SIGINT capabilities, aircraft carriers with stealth bombers are even stronger than 20 years ago due to being able to put those JDAMs onto an actually valuable target. It's basically the power of Zeus, to kill whatever you want whenever you want, unlike in the Vietnam era where you have to carpet bomb everything.
- vintermann 1y ago
  All you need to do is to smuggle in a little box. Ukraine already did it in Russia.
  - energy123 1y ago
    Granted that my comment was an over-simplification. Israel did get use from reconnaissance Hermes drones in the 12 Day War, possibly launched from Azerbaijan, for another example to add to the list. But as a broad gesture I believe the sentiment is correct. Strategic depth shifts the utility from saturation with attack drones and SRBMs, like what Russia is doing to Ukraine, and what Iran couldn't replicate with MRBMs due to the distance ... to the classic F16 missile trucks to deliver JDAMs with F35s for SEAD.

barrkel 1y ago

Direct kinetic war between nuclear powers is pretty much unthinkable - mutual annihilation if either core territory is threatened. Instead, wars happen through proxies or direct attacks on non-nuclear powers, and then you need the ability to project power short of a nuclear response. Russia can't prevent aid to Ukraine with nuclear blackmail. The US can't defend Taiwan without ships - it can't use nuclear blackmail itself. And if it doesn't defend Taiwan, not only is Western prosperity threatened, but the entire structure of allies that the US built after WW2 crumbles into a chaos of small parties more easily picked apart.

dgroshev 1y ago
We just had a direct kinetic war between nuclear powers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India–Pakistan_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India–Pakistan_conflict
energy123 1y ago
Pursuing total defeat is unthinkable, bu pursuing limited gains with clear signalling is plausible, and it's happened a few times against nuclear powers, like Yom Kippur War.

energy123 1y ago

Nuclear weapons are overrated. Multiple countries already invaded a nuclear power (1973 Yom Kippur War) and nothing happened. If Egypt wasn't afraid of nukes, what makes you so confident that your future enemy will be? It's an empathy gap. You are rightly cautious of nukes, but you then project that mindset onto belligerents, which is the mistake. A very important rule in strategic planning is to avoid projecting your own calculations onto the enemy. Nuclear powers, like all states, need to meet the pacing challenge and be capable of winning, or at least have enough asymmetric capabilities to force a frozen conflict if necessary.

tim333 1y ago

Even without nuclear weapons, shipping seems quite vulnerable to naval drones and cruise missiles these days.