America Needs to Build More (and Better) Ships | Hacker News Reader

America Needs to Build More (and Better) Ships

liberalpatriot.com

15 pointsjseliger22 comments

Spending tax dollars to improve your domestic industry... unfortunately sometimes has the opposite effect. It depends on how incentives are aligned. For instance, if USA military contractors turn around and spend billions on overseas steel, subcomponent import and labor, do the dollars really spin off into the USA economy?

Robust and competitive domestic commercial shipbuilding industry, now there's a good place to start.

The atricle reads like it's written by someone long on USA shipbuilding companies.

I'm having a hard time believing that ships matter to great-power battles of the future. In total war these would be immediately taken out by hypersonic missiles.

Of course they matter. Otherwise, the U.S. would not find it necessary to maintain so many allies close to the Strait of Malacca, as a strategy to manage China should a war arise.

Hypersonic missiles aren't magic. They have very limited sensors and maneuverability. Targeting is still a huge problem.

And limited range. We are still deep in the era where Navy is the dominant means of force projection.

Perhaps, but doesn't that same argument imply that submarines will be even more valuable in the future?

Wouldn't ships be able to intercept these?

I agree. The sinking of the Moskva last year highlights how vulnerable ships are now.

IIRC, wasn't that mostly an issue with poorly manning duty stations, combined with offline sensors?

The jury is still out re: the efficacy of Kinzhal missiles. Ukraine reports it's been able to intercept them with old-fashion Patriot anti-missile systems.

I agree with parts of the authors commentary, but I was disappointed that he didn't mention the LCS debacle as one of the reasons American shipbuilding is taking a beating.

LCS and Zumwalt debacles. Most of the surface ships the Navy has purchased in the past decade are essentially useless.

Or even regular missiles. Right now, the Russian Navy is retreating from its ports in Crimea to ports out of range of Ukraine.[1] Two ships were sunk, and the rest are being removed before they get sunk. We're seeing this former hypothetical play out for real.

In the Ukraine war, we're seeing that systems which are mounted on trucks, or are even man-portable, can take out most high-cost assets - tanks, ships, aircraft, etc.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/satellite-imagery-indic...

Which is why the US Navy is pivoting it's battle fleet away from littoral operations and back towards blue-water sea control. The concept is to launch stand-off strike weapons and interdict sea lines of communication outside the range of shore defenses.

It's also questionable whether the Russian Navy experience is even relevant. They are simply incompetent and poorly equipped. NATO has been feeding the Ukrainians real-time targeting data which gives them a huge advantage.

A blue sea Navy is vulnerable to a growing number of long range weapons. On top of my head, nuclear EMPs. Hypothetically, a hostile great power military may be willing to blast above uninhabited Pacific, compared to above densely populated Europe / Asia. Yuck.

The whole nuclear EMP thing is mostly science fiction. It's just not a serious threat to warships.

The Black Sea is smaller than the Pacific through. The theory I heard is that in an hypothetical US-China war the US Navy would be able to stay in the Pacific but far away from the coast.

> the US Navy would be able to stay in the Pacific but far away from the coast.

Google Earth view of Taiwan.[1] Spend some time looking at the geography.

- Taiwan is only about 100km from the mainland.

- Almost all the development in Taiwan is on the west coast, facing China.

- The developed strip is only 10-20km deep.

- The middle of the island is a north-south mountain range.

This was a good defensive situation until China built large numbers of truck-mounted anti ship missiles with more than enough range to cross the Taiwan strait, and a large number of warships able to operate over that range.

[1] https://earth.google.com/web/@23.88435184,119.65980108,35.12...

Are big-iron investments like this even useful for an outright shooting war with another major power? It feels like our defense budget could be better spent on more cost-effective, unmanned tech

Hard to say.

The Ukraine war may not have a ton of lessons for a conflict involving great powers. So far Russia has held back from using its arsenal to its fullest (no nukes, not exactly firebombing Kiev to oblivion). Maybe a preview of a war in Taiwan, though I think that kind of conflict would be quite different

Unmanned platforms have to launch from somewhere. Like a ship.

I don’t feel it provides many arguments supporting it’s thesis that this is super important.

Don't read this article. All it says is America has less repair ports then it used to and doesn't build big container ships.

It provides 0 support to its claim that this somehow means the US navy is vulnerable to some sort of not even imagined adversary. It doesn't survey any of the other NATO members either, which are bound to come to the aid of the US in a conflict.

It doesn't mention any of the ownership of active container ships on the seas, or the fact that many of the corporations that own them are domiciled in US-friendly nations and depend on rich US consumers for their own wellbeing.

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