The U.S. needs a shipbuilding revolution
usni.org
usni.org
Somebody noticed :)
Too late now, Nixon "opened up" China and Ronald Reagan said "NO!" to the kind of prosperity that would be needed in the 21st century.
It's like political parties haven't been paying attention at all for a "little" while now.
If American voters can not get over electing media "personalities" acting as leaders, those kind of fakers are not going to be far enough in the rear-view mirror to allow pulling ahead by the 22nd century :\
We're already 1/4 of the way to 2100.
And more gloomy than ever in the 21st century so far, recovering industrial leadership just got dramatically more unlikely in the last few months :(
An interesting thing to look at is something called the "Fully Burdened Cost of Fuel": for every gallon that the US delivers to a Forward Operating Base, they spend something like 6-20 gal getting it there.
The point is that you need to move insane amounts of stuff to fight a war effectively. The actual fighting is just the tip of an iceberg of logistics.
That said, for smaller engagements when you have a forward operating base, you can air drop a massive amount of tonnage on a dime with C-5s. And if we ever turn Starship into an orbital equipment delivery system, we'll be able to open new salients quickly.
The largest plane can carry 225 or so tons.
The largest ship can carry 225,000 tons or so.
That is 3 orders of magnitude different.
But big ships are outdated crowd surmises big ships used to support logistics (including of other big ships) are also not survivable especially against peer power, not irregular forces that can't touch rear. TBH once adversaries can hit logistics tail (or even CONUS), and they increasingly can thanks to proliferation of rocketry/missiles, the backbone that supports US global expeditionary model breaks. And if enough adversaries can threaten that model, it's value drops even against irregular forces with larger power backing.
The point is, for the first time in modern history, the era of US having uncontested/effective ocean logistics during war time, especially vs peer may be closing. And there simply may not be viable alternative to support expeditionary model that relies on heavy tooth-tail ratios. Which isn't to say sea power is over, just value diminished. At some point it maybe not be economical / feasible to fight large wars on other side of world against adversaries fighting in their backyards. And that's something planners need to account for.
Here's an idea: How about _not_ engaging far away from your landmass and not "projecting power"? The rest of the world has had quite enough of your projections.
Submarines and aircraft remain the safest, and best way to deliver offensive firepower. The aircraft carrier does have a role, but it is far behind the contact line.
That's why they're called 'aircraft carriers'. The entire point of them is that the offensive firepower in the form of aircraft can reach out pretty far. They don't need to sail the carrier right up beside the enemy in order to hit him with their swords, you know.
Jokes aside, there might (eventually, maybe not today?) be a point in what you're saying. It's been a long time since 1945 when carriers last were used in a major peer conflict, and a lot has changed since then.
Xi wants to make China great again he doesn't want a nuclear wasteland.
Cruise missiles have ranges >1500km:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile_family)
And they're putting missiles in shipping containers so as long as you have a flat surface you can place them just about anywhere:
* https://gcaptain.com/pacific-dragon-is-the-shipping-industry...
Until drones carrying drones carrying drones becomes a thing.
The problem is that can’t do short range from ships because it is too dangerous to get close to shore. Anti-ship missiles are common now, and guided artillery and glide bombs are possible.
Finally, drones haven’t been useful against ships in Red Sea, and some are good size. Speed matters for getting through defenses. The slow and small ones can be shot down by guns or rockets, the fast ones are anti-ship missiles.
Comparing a Houthi attack against a peer adversary drone & missile attack would likely have very different results. Defense depletion (i.e. out of ammo) is the current weakness of defenses. That is why energy weapons are the next big thing - you don't run out of shells for a laser. Counting on defense is a historic proven way to fail at war-fighting.
> Speed matters for getting through defenses.
As does stealth, surprise, maneuverability, timing, rules of engagement and many other factors. Defense is really difficult - especially given you may be countering something unprecedented. The recent Red Sea activity did not have the element of surprise, no stealth weapons were used and the timing was well known. Not a good bellwether.
It's a similar story for SM-2/3, in the Red Sea they faced massive interceptor depletion and had to leave, and even then many missiles were not intercepted, we just got lucky that they missed.
Depletion is the problem with destroyers. Something like an arsenal ship (think instead of 90-120 missiles, being loaded out with 300) would make more sense. Cheap drones are more of a depletion problem than are hypersonics.
SM6 is the primary USN weapon against hypersonic, not the SM2/SM3. SM3 is primarily designed for ballistic missile defense.
Which interceptor would be used against a target largely comes down to whether the intercept is endo- or exo-atmospheric. The SM3 is an exo-atmospheric intercepter: it's designed to collide with the target in the vacuum of space. The SM6 is an endo-atmospheric interceptor. SM3 can be used against ballistic missiles, including both traditional re-entry vehicles and hypersonic glide vehicles, before they enter the atmosphere. The SM6 can be used against anything in the atmosphere: including ballistic missiles in the terminal descent phase.
So why even bring it up? Kinzhal is just a slightly faster ballistic missile, the fact that it can be intercepted in ideal conditions is not new. What matters is the interception probability and the engagement envelope, so what's the point to bring it up and then immediately discredit whatever useful inference can be made while still jumping to a conclusion?
SM6 is just an upgraded SM2, it's intended for BMD just the same - it's just better at it, but not better enough for the Red Sea situation.
If you can read between the lines of the posture reviews, any potential full scale war with China would include a massive nuclear first strike by necessity.
Everyone is aware of this and is avoiding a large scale engagement.
Most likely a regional war with China (probably over Taiwan or less likely, the Philippines) would draw in lots of regional players because everybody want's to pick China apart.
1. Ballistic missiles: most ballistic missile systems are hypersonic. We've had ballistic missiles since WW2, the very first American ballistic missile (the redstone) was hypersonic, and that was back in the 1950s. This is not new. People make a lot of missile like the Khinzal, but this is just an air-launched version of the Iskander missile, which is from the 1990s.
2. Hypersonic glide vehicles: normal ballistic missiles drop a re-entry vehicle that just falls to earth. It might have some stabilizing fins, and some ability to make minute adjustments to its course to improve accuracy, but this is limited. In a hypersonic glide vehicle, the re-entry vehicle is meant to be more of a glide body, and is able to make actual maneuvers and turns. The technology here is also not new. For example, the Space Shuttle is an example of a hypersonic glide body. Research in this field has been around for a long time, though it's only in the last few years that countries have begun actually fielding weapons featuring glide vehicles. The annoying part with this is that the term "hypersonic glide vehicle" implies that the reason these are so difficult to intercept is because of their speed. But it's actually the opposite: in order to maneuver, a hypersonic glide vehicle actually has to travel slower than a traditional ballistic re-entry vehicle! The advantage of a HGV is not its speed, but its ability to maneuver, which makes it harder to intercept.
3. There are also hypersonic cruise missiles. These are missiles that use ramjet or scramjet engines to fly at hypersonic speeds. These tend to be even slower than HGVs, and will have much shorter ranges because they have to consume fuel to maintain this speed. Several of these are in development, but I don't believe any have been fielded. The main advantage of these is even further maneuverability, and a lower flight altitude which should make them harder to detect. Additionally, because they are flying in the atmosphere, it requires a different type of interceptor to defeat.
A ship lets you get closer to the action. The closer you get the easier it is to overwhelm electric warfare - either because the slow drones can be programed and so don't need a radio (or fiber connections), or because you can make your signal strong enough to overcome it.
Missiles don't have infinite range. Different ones have different limits. Longer range costs both more money and payload. A ship can laugh off anything a tiny drone can do (even a commercial ship).
The above are all trade offs. However navy warfare is not dead and unlikely to die.
I also think the concerns about the the ability of large ships to defend themselves in modern combat are a bit overblown. Just because there exists a weapon system that can defeat something, doesn't mean that thing is irrelevant. You'll see all these comparisons of the cost of a surface combatant with the cost of an anti-ship missile or drone as though that decides the matter. But it really doesn't. It costs a ton of money to train and equip and infantry soldier, and yet you can kill that solider with a bullet that costs pennies. Does that mean infantry have been obsolete for the last few centuries? Of course not! A system is not obsolete until something comes along that can perform that same role, but better.
Arsenal ships are a bad idea because putting all the missiles in one basket. It is better to have 3 destroyers that can cover different directions, or go on separate missions. The Navy has finally figured out reloading, it is much better to send one ship away to reload and still keep defense.
You can go smaller (that’s called a guided missile frigate) but thanks to the square cube law, a bigger ship can carry much more than twice as much missiles, sensors, etc. as two ships that are half the size. You also get economies of scale on maintenance. There are tradeoffs here, and the DDG as the backbone of the surface fleet and the guardian of the aircraft carrier is a great solution to those tradeoffs.
Don’t be a doomer when it comes to the arms race between missiles and air defense. Air defense can defeat a concentrated missile/drone attack, as we’ve seen in the two recent Iranian attacks on Israel. There are novel air attack threats from drones, but there are also novel air defense systems to counter them such as lasers (https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1886259012632535520). If I had to guess I’d say that the balance is actually shifting in favor of air defense on net.
I do agree with you that submarines are important. In fact the Ohio class SSGN practically is an arsenal ship. The problem with submarines is that they have to operate as lone wolves. Surface ships and carrier aircraft can share sensor data and use sensor fusion to construct a shared picture of the battlespace, but submarines can’t be looped into the network without exposing themselves. Again, tradeoffs. And usually the solution to these tradeoffs is combined arms—you build a task force with a carrier, some surface ships, and some submarines and each ship has its own job to do to cover the weaknesses of the others.
Humm-Vees, Bradley's and other infantry mobility vehicles with mounted guns for fire support have very much stepped into the tactical role.
The roles of a "cavalry" unit are reconnaissance/scouting, raiding, pursuit. Whether they're on horseback or mounted in M2/M3s doesn't matter. Today the cavalry role still persists in most large militaries because the fog of war requires it.
I just realized you're not the guy who said "it doesn’t mean the old ones are obsolete", so probably moot
Hordes of cheap naval drones is what Ukraine had the ability to produce. And long before the current conflict started, Russia's navy was well-known for having very serious maintenance, performance, and survivability issues. They would have proven similarly vulnerable to a very wide variety of weapons.
It is ok to not like the result, but don't misappropriate words for it, thus diluting their meaning. Words having concrete meanings are important for reasonable discourse.
That is a coup, plain and simple.
IMHO thats on the only way a tariff can be successful. If you want vertically integrated growth then by logic you should run Tariffs for all the parts and resources needed for triggering that growth. If you decide that ship building needs a shot in the arm thats going to be iron ore and steel (largely).
throwing tariffs around for imaginary slights isnt going to trigger anything useful in your country... (unless thats the idea of course. There is a theory that a collapse is the point)
Considering what happened in the last two weeks alone this lack of self-awareness is simply brilliant.
They're also going to start finding ways to go around the USA with trade, military alliances and more.
The book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/208564/freedoms-for...
Only quibble about the book is that the author seems to subscribe to a great man theory of manufacturing, where having a CEO say "we will do it" is all that is needed and the rest of the engineering is left as an exercise to the reader.
Please note that, while a good read, the book was initially financed by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a group of large corporations who have a vested interest in making business look good.
* https://www.aei.org/research-products/book/freedoms-forge/
I, too, have read this book and was struck by the tone the book took every time the topic of unions came up. You'd think that unions were Nazi sympathizers wanting to sabotage the war effort or something.
So while it's worth a read, please be aware of the slant of the book.
Where are you, and how much are you offering per hour?
There was a chance to rebuild the us into a formidable industrial power, but it was lost in the early 2000s.
We gifted all of our knowledge advantages to an industrial adversary with a 4:1 population and resource advantage. They have improved their primary education to be vastly superior to ours, and their secondary education is not far behind.
Strategic goals were superseded by greed, and we will now have to settle for second fiddle or lower on the world stage with no hope of recovering a leadership role. Our military might will eventually be eclipsed by China as well, and in the interim will only serve to slightly slow our fading into irrelevance, while being an increasingly heavy yoke to bear as the expense of maintaining aging systems that we cannot replace continues to grow.
Yet, There is one inflection point that we might possibly be able to change this at: an all out, no holds barred investment in space resource and energy harvesting:
this expands our high technology edge, gives us a resource advantage, gives us new territory, incentivises rapid robotic expansion of our industrial capacity….
We could leverage dominance in the space frontier while we still possess the military advantage on-planet to defend our will to do so. But we will have to throw everything behind the effort, in basically a wartime footing, or we cannot hope to succeed.
This is quite literally the last chance to avoid a CCP dominated world within 5 decades.
In the meantime, leverage the best asset we have: alliances with western nations. South Korea is really good at shipbuilding, to the point they are now authorized to repair US Navy warships based in the PACCOM AOR. Let them build ships for us too.
How do you start a flywheel? Our industry is light years behind China and would be prohibitively more expensive.
Tariffs? That's a moral equivalent of the Jones Act, just with more options for buyers.
The thing that worked really well for China was to force Western manufacturers to partner with their domestic industries so that they could learn the tricks of the trade, then be kick the Western companies to the wayside and discard the relationships when they're no longer useful.
I don't think we can mimic the China playbook because of our labor costs. There's no gradient or arbitrage to exploit. Maybe a partnership between the US and Mexico where we take advantage of Mexican labor, yet use US capital and retain ownership?
An example is chain link fencing. It's not especially glamorous, yet its a huge industry. The machine's don't have to be especially advanced, yet for somebody normal to even consider purchasing a chain link fencing weaving machine (especially in early 2000's China) look(s|ed) prohibitive. It still looks prohibitive in 2025. A lot of manufacturing looks that way. You need 10-50k up-front in machinery and capital purchases at the low end.
In America, the ROI calculations would always look bad, and the standard lenders would "almost" always turn you down for suggesting investment in a thin margin industry with "old" tech. You're not proposing 10x returns. You're not proposing get out tomorrow VC. You're proposing a decade long relationship of manufacturing chain link fences. Except now China rules the entire chain-link fence manufacturing industry.
The focus on scraping America's modern tech has a lot of the same issues. China didn't get a quick jump in naval ship building by scraping America tech and twiddling more silicon. They got it by buying an old Russian aircraft carrier from Ukraine and tugboating it half-way around the Earth. (Liaoning, original created as Riga for the Soviet Navy in Ukraine) [3][4]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_stimulus_prog...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Development_Bank
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaon...
[4] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chinas-very-first-air...
- high wages are not evenly spread demographically in the USA
- the wage distribution seems to me to be unusual in that it has a very long fat tail whereas the UK's is very clustered (I've forgotten the right term) on the median.
- modern industry can be highly automated
- modern logistics mean that industry can be decentralised
I believe that the last two are new since the USA and Europe outsourced large amounts of their industry to China. However the bigger issue is that competitive industries require very significant capitalisation because on the one hand modern products are staggeringly well engineered (with the trade offs of cheap, good and sophisticated taken into account) and on the other hand the processes used to make them require lots of tools, infrastructure, and robots.
Normal (Gaussian) distribution?
The issue looks from afar like a double-whammy of (1) pushing capital investment offshore to China resulting in most of the productive capital formation happening in Asia and (2) banning a lot of industrial activity in the US for environmental reasons. A lot of what the Chinese did to get ahead was literally illegal in most Western countries - some of it was labour laws mind. Even today there I question whether something like Shenzhen would be legal in the US. If Shenzhen was magically transplanted to the US, what would happen when the lawyers move in?
I don't think this always have to be true, e.g. I'm polish and used work in uk and by crossing border to uk overnight I increased my salary 2-3x but that doesn't mean my productivity increased 2x.
You want to google concept called "Dutch Disease", an economic phenomenon where a resource boom (like oil) causes currency appreciation and decline in other sectors. Norway and the Netherlands faced this issue.
Lyn Alden’s Broken Money argues that modern financial systems fail to protect savings. For high-income countries like the U.S., the issues include:
- Currency devaluation: Persistent inflation undermines wage growth.
- Debt reliance: Governments and households depend on borrowing, creating fragility
- Technological gaps: Financial infrastructure lags behind energy/tech advancements, exacerbating inequality.
It is entirely possible that moving from Poland to the UK doubled the amount of wealth you were generating. Dutch disease is an expression of that - if all your customers are wealthy then the economy signals that you are more productive than if all your customers are poor. Because you are.
Although I'm all aboard with Lyn Alden’s complaints. The US keeps disabling economic feedback mechanisms rather than reform failures and it is starting to catch up with them since the Chinese just work harder than they do.
EDIT And I think you might want to talk about the Baumol effect, not Dutch disease. Dutch Disease is typically invoked for countries that find high mineral wealth and then experience problems but Baumol effect is more relevant to productivity increases.
[0] We make no moral judgement, but economics is a harsh accountant.
Isn't this just the downside of comparative advantage?
Like you have the classic example of island 1 can make 5 apples or 15 oranges and island 2 can make 15 apples or 5 oranges so island 1 makes 15 oranges and island 2 makes 15 apples. What happens to the apple industry of island 1? It gets destroyed as they only focus on making oranges.
The only way you avoid dutch disease (Natural Resource Curse nowendays) is to intentionally have an inefficient economy.
Yes, but the economy should serve the people. The people do not serve the economy. Or at least that's the way it should work. Wall Street tends to disagree with this sentiment.
I'm not what a realistic path to come back from that looks like.
And yes China did what most industrializing nations do, sacrifice their environment and burn natural resources at prodigious rates to super charge and grow their economy. It's a horrible place to be long term and even China is starting to implement some environmental protections because that kind of pollution is terrible long term. They're even seeing their neighbors do the same thing that drove so much of US production to China, cheaper labor and fewer government hurdles, it's a cycle many countries have followed.
[0] In any meaningful capacity, have to say it or the pedants will mention Pearl Harbor or the tiny number of attacks from things like balloon bombs etc.
We do not need to rely on foreign labor which is a tiny fraction of American labor to maintain our quality of life. Lots of things need to be reorganized to make this work and some people with a lot of wealth will have a lot less certainly.
But foreign manufacturing of nearly everything is relatively new, you have to remember. America was plenty prosperous not so long ago before we started exporting so many jobs to Mexico, then China and beyond. We had the highest wages in the world then too.
I mean, this alone makes whatever you are proposing a non-starter in America, surely you realize that
Regardless of their specific needs, this situation has resulted in a unique exchange mechanism: developing countries must offer their best products in exchange for goods from developed countries. As a result, people in developing countries are unable to enjoy the finest products produced in their own countries, and sometimes not even second-tier products, as these are reserved for foreign consumers.
The U.S. market features products from various countries and regions, including China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Jamaica, and Mexico. The world's finest products flow into the U.S. market in exchange for U.S. dollars. As everyone competes to obtain dollars, competition intensifies, leading to high product quality and low prices. This has created unprecedented prosperity in the U.S. market. This outcome is a result of market mechanisms and the benefits that the U.S. has gained from the global status of the dollar, established by the Bretton Woods Conference after World War II.
However, the massive influx of foreign products into the U.S. has also impacted its domestic industries, causing factory closures and rising unemployment. This issue cannot be ignored, which is why the forces of free trade and protectionism in the U.S. have been in constant conflict.
— Wang Huning, America Against America
* AI models are steadily continuing to improve in capabilities and efficiency
* Massive investments are being made in scaling up AI infrastructure (see Stargate and xAI Colossus)
* Tesla expects to produce a few thousand Optimus robots this year and use them for some level of internal production workload, meanwhile Hyundai has acquired Boston Dynamics with what I can only assume is a plan to take its tech out of the research labs and commercialize it at scale
* Aside from all the other recent and ongoing advances in energy tech and infrastructure, production fusion power is coming; if you take sama-backed Helion's word for it, they may be fulfilling a contract to deliver it to Microsoft as soon as 2028 (knock on wood)
Add all that together, and it's not difficult to see a trend that converges on a rapid massive expansion of global and particularly US manufacturing output kicking off within the next decade or two. As soon as the hardware and software are good enough for robots to outcompete average unskilled human laborers at most tasks on cost and quality, expect fully automated assembly lines to start pumping out humanoid robots 24/7, which will then be put to work 24/7 on any number of manufacturing and construction projects with logistics based around autonomous vehicles.
The overhead of US labor cost and safety regulations will become moot with machines doing the work, while our abundance of resources and first mover advantage on AI will give us a big headstart over the rest of the world. Meanwhile, our low population density means we'll have a ton of empty land to build on and a population size that will make UBI payments comparably easy. In that scenario, eclipsing 2025 China's shipbuilding capacity will be the least of our concerns. Whoever wins the AI race wins global hegemony, and right now that race is America's to lose.
All of which is to say, there's a reasonable argument that America is currently sitting at a firm local minimum in strength and prosperity, which conversely means that China is plausibly approaching a ceiling on its own relative military and economic power for the foreseeable future. If that is the case, it means that the next decade or so may be an exceptionally high-risk period for Taiwan. However, it also means that competent US leadership would throw everything it has at a defense of Taiwan in the event of an invasion; irrespective of any fabrication capacity that may end up built out in the US, allowing a Chinese takeover of the main TSMC facilities would be surrendering far too great a strategic asset in the AI race. That being the case, while Chinese leadership may or may not agree, I would argue that the rational move on China's part would actually be to give up on Taiwan and focus on investing heavily in SMIC and other fronts of the AI race. Invading would at best yield a pyrrhic victory, at worst yield an expensive defeat and burn a bridge with the people of Taiwan for generations. The right move would be to put aside the short-term economic gambit and nationalistic fervor, and instead lay out a roadmap for a possible future peaceful unification or alliance by proving themselves to be a good neighbor over time.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-navy-looking-to-s-korean-japane...
Before the navy yards were shut down, they provided pretty much the exact capabilities which the author bemoans the US desperately needing now. And were extremely useful for keeping private shipyards honest - "You want HOW much? It'll take HOW long? Sorry, we'll just build the ship ourselves."
Similar (and again unmentioned) in Great Britain. Even though the article talks about (Royal Navy Admiral) Jacky Fisher. Who, famously, spent a fair hunk of his career managing such facilities for the RN. And was famous/notorious for squeezing both the RN's and private yards to produce more ships, faster, better, and cheaper.
* https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping/videos
AIUI, the problem is that the US lacks a policy. This is what China's strength is: making a decision and getting it done.
The article mentions the SHIPS Act which the channel talks about:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iksNr3s2WVs
As well as five suggestions for Trump:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CoOXdpxvIo
The IRA/CHIPS acts helped bring plants to the US soil. Industrial policy can work. China subsidized many industries that they thought would be strategically important, and they're now important players in those industries.
As Noah Smith recently wrote:
> Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car.
> Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself.
I see a lot of people say the CHIPS act is a success that should be duplicated but is there any evidence of this yet or is it merely because money was committed and promises were made? How much industrial output vs the amount of subsidies etc. It will probably take a decade before we know if it worked.
* https://www.semiconductors.org/emerging-resilience-in-the-se...
?
Even in a hypothetical war between US and China being limited to moving fuel, food, bullets etc by aircraft alone is a major logistical issue. Military conflict is potentially millions of people and within an order of magnitude that many vehicles.
Guarding such slow moving cargo vessels by air alone is again impractical, thus surface ships and subs. Every minute a drone or jet is in the air has an associated cost, an aircraft carrier a few 100’s of miles offshore is still a lot closer than mainland USA.
* Navies guard shipping/supply lines. This is true for war time, but it is also true for peace time.
* Navies can disrupt enemy supply lines. Supply lines are critical in any prolonged conflict.
* Air superiority remains an important aspect of war. We need places near the theater of war to operate aircraft from. An aircraft carrier essentially means we can place an airbase anywhere in the world. This is a more dynamic than limiting ourself to just allies that give us land to build bases.
* Armies often use their navy to secure critical resources needed for the war effort, and guard supply lines extracting those resources. Oil, minerals, food, etc. If we increase our industrial capacity during a war we will need to increase our raw material input, at a time when former trading partners might stop selling to us.
I think it looks like those would need quite extreme ranges. Well intercontinental ballistic missiles are a real solution.
Watching the Russian fleet "deal with" Ukranian drone boats (aka sink to the bottom of the Ocean) made me realize that most war ships aren't prepared for these encounters.
> Watching the Russian fleet "deal with" Ukranian drone boats
Most of the successes I've seen with Ukraine's drones are against unarmed targets. They had great success using USVs to attack oil rigs in Crimea and Mi-8s with very weak countermeasures.
This isn't to say that USVs are useless against the Russian Navy proper, but even Russia has weapons intended to pick off surface combatants at a standoff range. I suspect we don't hear more success stories because they're at least partially capable of defending against them.
It might actually need a kitchen renovation but you can't actually do it until you repair the foundation under the kitchen. The bathrooms might be a higher priority, you don't have any tools, you just kick out all the contractors, and the next meeting with your parts suppliers is in the courthouse.
And what would the dollar amounts be?
That's not so insanely expensive as to be completely undoable.
Always makes me think of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
:)
We voted to pass laws that give massive protections to workers, now we need to vote to protect the businesses that employ those workers or it all for naught.
US businesses are incapable of thinking long term.
If the US wants to build a ship industry they must invite Chinese shipbuilders to kickstart it just as they invited TSMC to build a factory here.
But that doesn't seem likely does it?
Ah, one mustn't forget to prepare for the next war one is likely going to start...
Well, I'd say the US needs potable running water, health care for its population, and shelter - all three of which are not enjoyed by many of its residents and citizens. And if we're talking about war, perhaps a "recapitalization" of firefighting and disaster relief would be a thing to invest in before warship construction.
lol, i like the tone here
usually i'll question abt what the threat is exactly
but now i only say, wish you have a good luck, little magas
The only logical course of action at this stage would be to seek an alternative that leverages the US's existing strengths. Naval vessels are largely outdated technology and meanwhile the US is the world leader in aerospace manufacturing. If we were to revive the 747 Cruise Missile Carrier concept, or else an equivalent program, it could deliver the same range and operational payload as a guided missile destroyer, but at dramatically lower cost and higher operational tempo. With the ability to rapidly ferry munitions thousands of miles to a conflict zone, one 747 CMC aircraft could replace multiple guided missile destroyers despite costing one fifth the price. This is possible because the 747 CMC is based on a reliable and proven aircraft with existing economies of scale.
Thank you for reading my shameless sales pitch.
This is what politicians just don’t seem to realise about industry and engineering.
People get good at things by doing them repeatedly and optimising. That’s the only proven way. So of course if we build a couple of naval ships every decade, maybe a giant train line every 30 years or similar, it will be done terribly.
Then there’s lots of hand wringing about how we can’t do this any more.
We are so, so far behind China in industrial capacity now. If we ever did get in a war with them they’d outbuild us 10 to 1. Technical advantages would be pretty much irrelevant at that level.
They are conditioned to worship at the altar of small businesses and good ol' craftsmanship. (And plot after plot they blindly erect yet another replica of the standard American Dream with the compulsory backyard where they truly can be free, and conduct HOA approved activities, and complain about the neighbor making a noise with their fucking weedwhacker, and complain about the other neighbor that has a problem with the smoke from the occasional backyard cooking.) Otherwise it's gentrification, more traffic and oh, ew, maybe even affordable-unit-dwellers.
Having said that, I've no idea where you live so it could be completely different in your area
Any more streamline than that is apparently more costly or otherwise unappealing to people. It isn’t not small businesses building most homes in the US, they are large, and sometimes publicly traded businesses.
your 100 day house has slack built in so if one crew is running late the next isn't affected. This means you can tightly schedule the labor a month in advance.
There is no slack, because each team has to be operating in lockstep so work never stops, otherwise margins tank and a profitable project becomes a loss.
The expertise of managing and executing this non trivial task is why those businesses succeed, and why landowners outsource development to them.
SFH is itself a waste of money. And land, which is especially expensive where housing costs are high. For every small house different crews need to go there, prepare the site, do the foundation, etc.
Half of the hard costs is labor. (Which is, again, usually high in areas with high housing costs.)
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/what-makes-housing-so...
And of course the opportunity cost due to lost density effect is substantial, blablabla.
The tragedy is that there's a huge discontinuity here, and overcoming that would require a lot of capital (social, political, financial).
And in general construction productivity is extremely meh, to phrase it politely.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insight...
It's a pretty specific type of person who rejects the construction of streamlined social housing - somebody who definitely doesnt pay rent and someone who probably receives it.
The manufactured ones only win when it's very tiny (think: trailer) or when you do an entire development with them, and even then you often need a rail line or something to make it work.
Even the "put together on site" kit ones run into problems that the stick-built basically avoid, like things not lining up exactly right.
We're building houses, maybe not enough, and almost certainly not exactly where some people want to live, at the price they want. But they're being built.
Real expensive custom homes are where you change dimensions so that non-standard parts are needed (not even things like wider doors, but non-standard widenesses).
Of course there's a lot of things to automate. As I mentioned in this comment half of hard costs is labor.
You can build a tract of homes in 90 days (or less) using stick frame. They won't be fancy, but they'll be up to code (and with a little extra cost (<10%) and effort, they can be made much more efficient than just code).
A crew of 4-5 guys (plus some subs) can build a custon home in 80 days:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYd73YP57Ik&list=PL8XEQ1XKYN...
If you pipeline that and use a standardized, cookie-cutter plan an entire row can be build out in a similar time frame. Production builders do it all the time:
* https://www.newhomesource.com/learn/custom-or-production-bui...
There are of course mass-manufactured elements that can speed things up, like using trusses. There are also now services for pre-cut framing that saves on-site effor of measuring and such:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2FdAdxjSpw&list=PLDYh81z-Rh...
The building of the structure is not the bottleneck, it is the approval process and NIMBY road blocks that can add 2(+) years to a project.
There are ± tolerances at every interface, so if you're off a bit on the foundation, you can balance things out in the rough frame, so by the time you get to finish framing things are pretty square/plumb/level.
But if the pre-built stuff is ±0, then there's no wiggle room in that part of the build, so the rest of it has to be that much tighter as you've not nowhere to adjust things.
The problem with housing in America always comes down to the way it was financialized and securitized: too much relies on "line go up, forever". There's no room for new blood/capacity (read:competition), there's no room for "investments" to lose value.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/market-rate-housing-will-make-...
That's not to say housing construction regulation isn't a problem. It is, but two things can be problems at the same time.
Nobody is going to spend $x on a brand new house without having some say in it, and so those houses tend more and more toward "high end/luxury". After all, why go through the hassle of all the paperwork and building and NOT sell for the highest price you can get?
Same thing happens with cars; the market for car buyers is much larger than the market for new car buyers, but only new cars ever get made. Nobody is making used cars, or even the absolutely cheapest possible, which affects the whole supply.
Well, duh!
As mentioned in this comment[0] land and labor are still the dominant part of the costs. So if municipalities would allow and prefer denser housing cost would be lower.
And of course if we are already talking about quasi-standardized (cookie-cutter) units, then there's even more reason to scale up projects so prefab components could be shipped in. (Though of course we again run into the tragedy of small scale. Metro areas are made up of too small suburban cities, they don't want a big project, they don't have the infrastructure for it, they don't want the extra traffic, and so on.)
In an environment where information is shared freely and widely.
> So of course if we build a couple of naval ships every decade, maybe a giant train line every 30 years or similar, it will be done terribly.
That's a reasonable explanation but it's not exclusive. You can still face these challenges and not do a terrible job. There is plenty of evidence this is the case.
> Then there’s lots of hand wringing about how we can’t do this any more.
Of course we can.
> so far behind China in industrial capacity now.
We just don't want to pay first world wages for the work. The arbitrage has been beneficial for a few decades as long as you're not concerned about high quality capacity. Which is what you'd want for a war.
There's just no point to it your oil tankers end up more expensive so nobody will want to buy them.
navy is different in that it is worth building your own and having that automation just in case.
They have several successful ship building companies today. Is your point that it didn't work? That doesn't seem born out by the reality of today.
> There's just no point to it your oil tankers end up more expensive so nobody will want to buy them.
So the quality is equivalent? And there are no buyers who require high quality in their ships?
The giant container ships and mammoth tankers are all built in Asia.
Umm, no.
Ever heard of loose lips sinking anyhing?
> In an environment where information is shared freely and widely.
The whole reason you need to do it yourself is because information does not get shared freely and widely. You practice, you learn, you know for the future.
> > So of course if we build a couple of naval ships every decade, maybe a giant train line every 30 years or similar, it will be done terribly.
> That's a reasonable explanation but it's not exclusive. You can still face these challenges and not do a terrible job. There is plenty of evidence this is the case.
No, there is no way to avoid doing a terrible job when you are out of practice. Maybe you can mitigate some of the worst issues and outperform expectations for someone out of practice, but you'll never be able to compete with those who do it regularly.
> > so far behind China in industrial capacity now.
> We just don't want to pay first world wages for the work.
No, even if the chinese were paid the exact same wages as americans they'ed be able to outperform because, having done this work for decades, they've gotten good at it. They've found new and innovative methods to make things more efficiently, they've invested in machinery and infrastructure to be more productive, and they've cultivated an industrial culture which makes it easier to learn and apply such lessons going forward.
is that normal to think like this?
do most americans think like this?
Pearl Harbor was devastating and Hawaiians probably have plenty of reason to worry about the defense going forward. Then again I looked up where it is and I am shocked how remote the islands are. I think it was first and foremost symbolic attack. Not a real threat to west coast.
- Europe has under-invested in its military for 30 years.
- Japan by constitutional decree.
- South Korea is rapidly building out an armaments industry, but they're also still at war.
- The UK is gutted and unable to afford much of anything.
- India and Pakistan are laser focused on each other.
If China or Russia feel in an expansionist mood, who other than the US has the capability to stop them?
Historical echoes of the above dynamic are why Americans bristle at criticism of their military spending.
Sure, everyone's a pacifist until someone invades...
Pax Americana protects the global maritime order.
I believe, but cannot prove, that hegemony and "forever war" are inextricable. a la "if you want peace, prepare for war".
--
I'm not justifying or defending Pax Americana or American exceptualism. IMHO, there is no justice, fairness, ethical, or moral defence. Statecraft, world affairs, empire, hegemony are amoral. And while the status quo sucks, for some a lot more than others, I think we'll miss it when it's gone.
> I was struck on this trip by how clearly India’s chosen rival is no longer Pakistan, but China. It does not matter if we are talking in military, technological, economic, or even cultural terms. The default comparison Indians make is with China.
I'd still be a bit worried if I was Georgia, possibly Moldova, maybe the Baltics if European defense commitments start looking even weaker, but to a large degree they're safer right now than they'd been with how badly depleted Russia is, not more at risk.
Poland's spending heavily right now (2025 projection is 4.7% of GDP) and rapidly up-arming itself. In terms of conventional conflict they're going to be in a pretty decent position.
I don't really see much in ways for Russia to be particularly "expansionist" beyond the places they're already an ongoing problem in. (Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova).
Regardless of whether or not Japan was a threat to the West coast, do you seriously expect a nation to stand by and simply shrug off something like that?
Obviously that theory didn't work for Japan then, but there's nothing to say nobody else couldn't make the same mistake again. The mentality of the American public may have changed considerably since WWII, maybe Americans are already demoralized and no longer certain of their own righteousness. Maybe the would-be attacker has some reason to believe they can influence the mentality of the American public using control of mass media popular with Americans. Or maybe they're just so certain of themselves and their advantages they think America will back down when push comes to shove because if the positions were reversed, they would back down and they project that onto America.
I do think that America would probably go to war if US military bases or carrier groups were attacked by the Chinese, but I think it's plausible that China might come to believe otherwise.
Massive military spending creates peaceful times
Peaceful times create low military spending
Low military spending creates fear of invasion
Also the Canadians are the only ones who ever burned down DC.
Fear of invasion creates massive military spending
Massive military spending creates a need for justification, and ability to invade
The need for justification, and ability to invade create wars abroad
Wars abroad create enemies and fear of invasion
I can think of a lot of previous hegemons who got complacent and lost everything.
But alas, here we are.
I see no reason to believe that democracies with women's suffrage and public education are immune to military competition. I certainly wouldn't want to risk massive upheaval of the world order which jeopardizes the existence of all those things to find out.
US responds militarily: not likely but possible
Imagine if Russia started the invasion of Ukraine by bombing polish railways, so that the Ukrainians would not be able to get supplies/resources from the EU. I would think that the EU/Nato response to that would be much more severe than what happened in reality.
While Guam might be considered different, as most Americans cannot place it on a map and it is on the other side of the world, seeing caskets of all the US troops dying makes it pretty hard to politically shrug off as not our problem.
There are a lot of very dumb assumptions baked into this. First, building something vulnerable to antiship missiles does not mean the plan is to use them under circumstances where anti-ship missiles aren't a threat. War necessarily involves casualties, and it is a perfectly rational strategy to endure some level of attrition. Next, wiping out american bases in close proximity does not eliminate the antimissile threat. Taiwan would be the ones firing anti-ship missiles, and after American forces are attacked they would have a nigh unlimited supply. Third, shocking Taiwan into a rapid capitulation is not a realistic strategy. Taiwan is a nearly unassailable fortress - with sufficient time and resources it could concievably be overwhelmed but the optimal strategy for Taiwan is to draw out the conflict as long as possible. Finally, if America is attacked, Taiwan's capitulation doesn't end the war. We have in the past fought to liberate allies who were capitulated by our enemies even when we ourselves were not attacked (see Kuwait in 1991), attack the US and the war goal changes to preventing an attack from every happening again.
Again, the reason you know they are building the invasion fleet is because we can see it from space. This isn't even something limited to the worlds' most elite intelligence agencies, anyone with a few hundred bucks can buy sattelite images of chinese shipyards. Before China is in a position to launch an invasion the US attack subs will already be in the strait of taiwan, there will be three carrier groups on permanent assignment to the pacific, and Taiwan will be sitting on top of an arsenal that could sink thousands of transport ships. America doesn't have to wait for war to break out to put these defenses in place. A chinese missile barage is not some new threat, every base in the region has been preparing for this scenario for decades now, and they still have several more years to make further preparations. Would America take losses if China launched a strike? Of course. Would we be caught with our pants down and have our military capability completely wiped out, unable to recover before the war was over? Not a chance.
You can strike US air and seapower close to the first island chain, but the airpower will be replenished in hours and the seapower in days. Blockades require a massive naval advantage, otherwise the attacking navy can concentrate its forces and defeat the blockading navy in detail. That's before we just consider the anti-ship missile threat which would make operating near an unfriendly Taiwan extremely costly even with no naval opposition. Taiwan already has supplies to last for months in the event of a blockade, and would certainly stockpile more on the eve of a major conflict. That's going to be a lot of attrition.
The major reason China is concerned about the first island chain is because it is actually quite vulnerable to the gaps in the chain being closed off and itself blockaded. The islands of the chain have much more direct access to the pacific, meaning they are much more resistant to blockade. The US and its allies can shut off the lifeblood of China's economy and industrial power without sailing anywhere near Chinese defenses. Either China will have to sail out to dislodge them on their terms, or the Chinese people will have to endure a long period of high attrition and economic hardship with little demonstrable gain. That's not to say it would be impossible for China to win, but they're going to have to go up against an extremely powerful military alliance that has a lot of positional advantage in a protracted war and win a fair fight.
Rushing Taiwan, despite being a bad idea, is probably the best strategy they could have. Its odds of success are low, for the reasons already discussed, but if they are the right combination of clever and lucky they might be able to exploit some unrecognized weakness. If they can get control of the island, a lot of things flip in their favor. The island's natural resistance to invasion would make them nigh impossible to dislodge (for comparison during WW2, the US judged an attack on Formosa to be impossible despite the Japanese only having about 170,000 troops there and the local population being hostile to Japan). Access to the pacific would make it more difficult to effectively blockade China; they still could, but it would take more resources and more would slip through. Finally, having won something, the Chinese people would be more tolerant of the war's costs. I think this is a losing gamble, and believe the Chinese invasion ships are best used as bargaining chips for negotiation (as in 'we'll sink $10 billion worth of ships to avoid tariffs which would cost us $100 billion'), but perhaps someone high up in the Chinese leadership has a different opinion.
I disagree. I've think we've seen and will continue to see China acting slowly on this, because their primarily incentivized to not attack. This, on three fronts:
- China is not looking for a vassal state. It's looking for national reunification. War is a terrible way to incorporate people into your nation. Effective perhaps, but very much a last resort.
- Time isn't on Taiwan side— TSMC is losing is edge. The technological gap between TSMC and Chinese silicon companies is shortening with each year that passes by, and this is meaningful not only because TSMC is 25% of Taiwan's GDP [1], but also because it's the most strategic export they have geopolitically. World leaders care more about any disruption to the supply of cutting-edge chips than they care about the name of the island on a map. This is specially true for the USA, and the reason why they want TSMC to manufacture in Arizona.
- Time is very much on China's side. In the past couple of decades China has consistently become more competitive with the USA in most strategic aspects, and bettered it's strategic standing overall. If your chances of winning are increasing every year, you don't want to attack today; you want to wait until you think your chances of winning have peaked.
If anything, I'd argue the USA is in a tough spot. If a war is going to happen, it would be in the USA's interest that it happens soon, albeit after they can secure advanced-chip production outside of Taiwan.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC#:~:text=Taiwan's%20export...
10 years, plus or minus a few. That's my guess.
I personally disagree with this read for two reasons:
1. I think this underestimates the USA's capacity to sway public opinion. Especially if it's helping on a war of defense (vs a war of attack) the USA government could IMO very much ease opposition. We saw this when Russia invaded Ukraine; a quick media and public response in support, various angles explaining why the USA/NATO should be involved (from fear to righteousness), Russophobia/Putin-phobia, etc. To this day, the main argument against the support of Ukraine I see widely and in public discourse isn't so much "is it the right thing to do", but rather just about the cost.
2. I think the USA can very much wage a war in spite of strong popular opposition too. We've seen this during the invasion of Iraq and the middle east. Most damningly perhaps we saw this during the Vietnam War. The war lasted 20 years, from 1955 to 1975, in spite of huge protests especially starting in the mid-sixties.
> A very quick war against American forces in the region followed by Taiwanese capitulation could leave the Taiwanese public largely untouched by the war [...]. This hinges on the US dropping out of the war and licking their wounds after Taiwan gives up on the first or second day, rather than continuing the war even though the Taiwanese government has now 'consented' to the invasion.
This personally sounds like a bad wager for China. They're betting a lot on "the best case". Would Taiwan quickly capitulate? Would the USA drop out of the war quickly too? Would the general population actually be largely untouched? How hurtful would it be to China if Taiwan and the USA don't act this way, or if the war on the ground actually causes major damage? Since IMO China is not in a hurry, I think it'd be smarter to simply wait; for it's own power to grow, for Taiwan's to diminish, and for the USA to lose interest and/or the capacity to fight in this possible war.
10 years doesn't sound too short a time for me haha. I'll avoid guessing time frames here, but if I had to make a prediction, I'd say it's quite possible we see reunification without an international war happening here at all.
The world did nothing for about a week and it seemed as though leaders were willing to sit on their hands for a week to see if it ended quickly. When it didn't they moved from vague, hand wavy statements to economic sanctions.
If China tries to invade we very well could see a weak, hollow political response from world leaders unless China falters and is stopped initially.
If there's a Chinese fleet or aircraft to the east of the island, there will be a naval battle.
Ukraine was (and is) a very small economy literally right up against russia that had long been in Russia's sphere of influence if not under its direct control. Ukraine's fall would have had little meaningful impact on western powers other than losing some face in countering Russian aggression. Specifically to avoid losing that face, western leaders made it very clear from the get go that they would not step in to defend Ukraine, specifically so that they could conserve their strength in case they needed it against China. The universal assumption was that Russia, which was believed to have one of the most capable armies in the world would steamroll the Ukrainians and the country would fall in days if not hours. Only when the Russian advance stalled and it became clear that Ukraine with moderate support could hold out did the west start providing that support, and only after Ukraine made some impressive gains that demonstrated it could not only hold out but potentially drive the russians back did the west start sending serious aid.
Conversely, Taiwan is extremely integrated into the global economy and is a key part of America's pacific power. We have been backing Taiwan for decades. Taiwan is an island, and one with very few appropriate landing sites, making its invasion extremely technically challenging for any power, even one with a strong navy. China, despite its recent shipbuilding spree, still lacks naval and amphibious combat experience, and it does not have anywhere near the fleet size necessary to fully leverage its army's main strengths. We are all freshly aware of lessons learned from Ukraine's invasion: that the strength on paper of countries like Russia and China do not correspond to force projection capability, that providing substantial aid early on is critical, and that modern military equipment is not so powerful as to collapse an otherwise functional country in hours. The amount of aid Taiwan needs is less, and the willingness to give it is greater. Only a major shift in US behavior would cause it to not support Taiwan.
Since Trump is in I’d expect invasion later this year or next. After invasion the people of Taiwan won’t be choosing anything.
Crimea was early 2014, inauguration was Jan 2017
He has been useful to Putin already (‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” ) and will be again by pausing the disastrous invasion and refusing Ukraine aid. I can see him being similarly useful to Xi for similar reasons.
China was not ready last decade they have been clearly preparing the last few years and now is the time to do so.
I generally consider the republicans to be more likely to reach for military action, though the democrats have seemed pretty war hungry in the last decade or two as well.
China didn't buy all that $TRUMP coin by accident.
I think I could replace "democratic president" with specifically Biden or Harris and would still believe the chance of military confrontation with them is "unlikely" unless directly attacked, but with Trump it is zero
1.) too much corruption within the military. also no real war experience for 40 years
2.) not enough oil to supply all the ships needed for invasion. look at how Russia's column of tanks failed in the early invasion of Ukraine.
3.) China is broke and you need money for a war against US and Japan.
4.) China imports most of its food and oil
5.) Taiwan has very advanced anti-ship missile systems, homegrown and from US. and once a ship is sunk near the landing, that then prevents other ship from landing, basically piling up ship corpses.
US responds militarily: 70%
1.) Marco Rubio's first day on the job was to meet with AUKUS, which shows how important Asia and first island chain is
2.) Trump has said he would bomb China if China had occupied Taiwan under his presidency
Most of the points raise are simply wrong.
> 1.) too much corruption within the military. also no real war experience for 40 years
China has corruption, yet is able to modernize and build up the military at a pace exceeding the USA's, which spends at least 2x more.
> 2.) not enough oil to supply all the ships needed for invasion. look at how Russia's column of tanks failed in the early invasion of Ukraine.
China is one of the largest oil producers in its own right. It extracts around 4 million barrels a day. The rest is imported, but primarily used for cars -- China's industry and rail networks do not rely primarily on oil. Due to China's transition to electric vehicles, they may have hit peak imports of oil.
During the US Gulf War, even with the tyranny of distance, the DoD used about 400k barrels a day: "Even during the peak of US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and “normal” training activities and force movements, the Defense Department’s daily average fuel use was nearly four hundred thousand barrels per day—an amount equal to slightly more than 10 percent of China’s domestic crude-oil output.38" [1]
China produces about 4 MILLION barrels a day, which is 10x 400k barrels. Also, China would be fighting on the front door step.
3.) China is broke and you need money for a war against US and Japan.
China has MULTIPLE TRILLION dollar funds. Did I say MULTIPLE? [2]
Plus, there's the annual TRILLION dollar trade surplus.
4.) China imports most of its food and oil
China imports a lot, but they are self-sufficiency on a caloric basis. The oil imports are primarily for cars. The country doesn't rely on oil for industry.
5.) Taiwan has very advanced anti-ship missile systems, homegrown and from US. and once a ship is sunk near the landing, that then prevents other ship from landing, basically piling up ship corpses.
Read the Japanese government's assessment: "China’s military has the capability to land ground forces on Taiwan within as little as one week after imposing a naval blockade on the island, according to a Japanese government analysis of Chinese military exercises conducted last year." [3]
[1] - https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
[2] - https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Funds-Communist-Finances-Am...
[3] - https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/politics/defense-security/20...
There's no evidence that China can wage a real war against Taiwan, much less near peer, despite having the units on paper, due to the corruptions. Russia has shown that because of military corruption, it's a paper tiger, much like China. There's a reason Xi Jing Ping is trying desperately to purge military leaders right now, but the military complex is fighting back.
> China produces about 4 MILLION barrels a day
which is for its own economy to function. A large naval plus army force would need significantly more oil to supply all the diesel ships, which each diesel ship require several thousand gallons of fuel per day. Unless you're saying China is willing to let its economy collapse in order to attack Taiwan, which is hilarious.
> China has MULTIPLE TRILLION dollar funds
This shows exactly that you have no idea what you're talking about. Everyone knows right now that China is dead broke and its local government is dead broke. The economy is suffering from deflation because its people have no money to spend.
> China imports a lot, but they are self-sufficiency on a caloric basis
Also you have no idea what you're talking about. When a country imports 80% of its food, it is NOT self sufficient
also, china is not suffering from deflation. re-read the articles talking about it. they're talking about "deflationary risk", as in, there isn't deflation but there are concerns of potential deflation in the future. there is actually very small (positive) inflation in china
thirdly, china does not import 80% of its food. it imports 80% of its soybeans and some other specific items, but not food as a whole. there is a national policy to rely in domestically produces food for what are seen as the staples like rice and vegetables. imports are mostly in "luxury" food items such as soybeans for livestock feed and stuff like milk, with the idea being that in some sort of extreme situation people would have to cut back on meat and such, which would be survivable
Those amphibious landing ships have one purpose; they're as clear a signal as Russia building field hospitals near the border stocked with blood.
The build up of troops could have been written off as sabre rattling, they did the same a year or two earlier. Sending a bunch of naval assets the long way around Europe was a much more clear sign, at least for me that's when I knew they were actually going to invade (again).
The terrifying thing about China's shipbuilding and armament focusing is "Why would they be building these specific things if they weren't planning on invading Taiwan?"
The focus on amphibious capability doesn't have a lot of dual purpose use...
It's basic, obvious, and rational defense policy. Everyone does it.
Why does the US have thousands and thousands of nukes? It's to ensure the destruction of any adversary in case of nuclear war.
The US isnt the only country that's entitled to an arms stockpile.
The former aren't much use if you want to invade an island. The latter are.
https://asiatimes.com/2025/01/china-building-monster-barges-...
Pretending like Chinese needs to stockpile amphibious assault capabilities for defensive purposes is sticking your head in the sand.
Nukes have essentially zero "defense" purposes. Yet all the great powers have them. It's called "good defense policy." All great powers do this.
> Pretending like Chinese needs to stockpile amphibious assault capabilities for defensive purposes is sticking your head in the sand.
Pretending that building out a military = instant invasion is paranoia.
Take a look at the USA military posture, including in Asia. See what forces are available.
So this means the USA is prepared to invade China any minute now? Plus nuke China, Russia because of the nukes?
I guess the US is about to invade Cuba.
[0] https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/4/5/31...
At this point in time, USA's isolationists may succeed in withdrawing from its foreign commitments. In which case, per your comment elsethread, realizing they no longer have USA's protection, Taiwan may capitulate.
The Chinese civil war started in the 1900s, many many decades ago, not yesterday.
Every single last PRC leader has had a goal for reunification of China, including Mao, Deng, Xi, Hu, etc, etc.
Every last one of them.
The civil war didnt start yesterday.
Thanks for the clarification. Next time I'll write "Xi, like every CCP leader before him, is wholly committed to retaking Taiwan."
"Reunification" DOES NOT mean the absolutely idiotic policy that US "think tankers" imagine of the PRC scheming to invade the island as soon as military might exists. We have idiots in year 2000 writing drivel like "Jiang Zemin’s desire to make reunification his legacy indicate that Taiwan will be attacked soon" [3]. Hint: no such attack took place because this mindset exists nowhere but in the minds of the retarded think-tankers.
Secession of Taiwan is absolutely a red line, but outside of a move towards secession, the peaceful development will continue.
1: "actively promote the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations" - http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/SpecialReports/2024/Celebratingth...
2: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/opinion/international-wor...
3: https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2000/03/how-china-will-t...
Enjoy the Pax Americana while it lasts. You won’t like what comes next.
The Paradox game Victoria 2 does a good job simulating this dynamic. Highest score is possible by sitting out ww2. https://acoup.blog/2021/08/20/collections-teaching-paradox-v... Is a nice write up.
you don't hear of them though.
Who gives these idiots power? Oh, that's right, we do.
Every two-bit is happy to screech about economics of scale out of one side of their mouth but you turn around and pick some other issue that they feel differently about and they want it regulated in whatever way they fancy, economics and long term feedback loops be damned.
The real problem is that western cultural norms (because let's be real here, this isn't just a US problem) don't sufficiently punish and dissuade people from being like this. It's not even lightly taboo unless you're a public figure and do it flagrantly, and even then nobody "cares", it's just an angle by which the people who don't like you get to fling rhetorical poo at you. And the problem runs bottom to top. It's not just the politicians, it's all of us.
This is a features of deindustrialization, offshoring, specialization, etc. The so-called uncultured rubes decrying globalization have a point on this one.
Do you mean rapid dragon should have been developed to work with our commercial airliner fleet rather than our military transport aircraft?
How would that work? I don't see rear cargo ramps on commercial aircraft (there may be some, but I don't know of them).
And the 747 at least could open the front and rear.
This is no longer true, unfortunately. The assembly line tooling has been decommissioned and scrapped, the supply chain is shut down, essential personnel has retired. If you want to restart the line, you would have to fund the entire 747-8 program over again from the ground up.
China's shipbuilding industry is so big that their aircraft carriers are being constructed by shipyards that make large cargo ships. Aerial photos show shipyards with drydocks full of cargo ships, with an warship or two mixed in. US warships are mostly built by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock, and the Bath Iron Works, which don't make civilian ships. There's little economy of scale in US warship construction. Some years ago, the head of Newport News told Congress that if they'd order two carriers at the same time, the company would throw in a third one for free. Congress declined the offer.
The PLAN now has more warships than the US Navy. Fewer carriers, but that's being fixed. China's carriers are getting better. The type 001 carrier was a refurbished Russian carrier. The type 002 was a smaller ski-jump carrier. The type 003 was comparable to the US Kitty Hawk class. Whether the next carrier will be nuclear powered hasn't been announced.
The everything-bagel approach. One of those requirements incentivises US shipbuilding, the other two incentivise other things. Seems like the net effect was less US shipbuilding and a smaller US-flagged fleet. Given those effects, it doesn't seem likely to have increased the number of US merchant seamen either.
It's like betting on Black for a roulette wheel versus betting on a specific number. You're still going to lose money but you lose the money slower by betting on black than a specific number. You need to show that betting on black loses money faster than a specific number to demonstrate that the Jones Act isn't furthering it's goal.
No ships were built because of the jones act, that's the problem. The jones act required people to do B if they wanted to do A, so they stopped doing A. A is intercoastal shipping. Nothing in the jones act encouraged B besides the opportunity to do A.
In your roulette example, the example isn't between a specific number and black. It's the jones act is playing roulette versus the non-jones act where you don't. Are you guaranteed to not have lost money by some other means if you never played roulette? No. But roulette is a game that provably loses over the long run, and so we should stop playing it.
Yes
And this is what happens. Naive protectionism 101
From that, there is a shortcut to the reasoning that occurs: Intercostal shipping is expensive : Jones Act's fault Can't build ships fast enough : Jones Act's fault Ships are expensive ; Jones Act's fault
The things that the Jones Act mandates are that: Shipping between American ports must be done on American built, owned and crewed.
For example, they will claim that foreign ships can't deliver to Hawaii or Porto Rico and that is why things are expensive there. However: ...although ships can offload cargo and proceed to the contiguous U.S. without picking up any additional cargo intended for delivery to another U.S. location... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Ef...
So it is possible for a ship from say China to deliver to Hawaii or Porto Rico, they are just not allowed to pick up cargo to deliver to the US from there.
They will claim with one breath, American labor is too expensive and then turn around and say that we would have a ship building boom if only we didn't mandate that we build ships.
I would agree that American labor is expensive, it is easy to lower costs when you have a LCOL area, don't care about worker protections and don't care about environmental effects.
Without the jones act, we would not have a ship building boom, but we probably would have more intra-US shipping via ship/rivers/etc.
>This will never succeed because the economies of scale are nonexistent without >dominance in the commercial shipbuilding market. War planners should have >pushed to repeal the Jones Act decades ago,
From another discussion on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33263176
>>The Jones Act, and the reduction in demand that it triggered, hasn’t prevented
>>and in fact probably caused—the closure of 300 domestic shipyards since the >>early 1980s.
and from comments: >The problem is, the Jones Act has harmed our shipbuilding capacity as well.
>According to the artcle our ship building capacity is 1% of China's and US >built ships cost 6-8 times as much. That's not helpful.
So there is this narrative that if we just get rid of the restrictions, suddenly we will become competitive.
In another thread, someone mentioned that we just had an election between a TV personality and the other a fake persona : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42931904 and how we need to stop electing elites.
That in a nutshell is why Trump was able to win, he is not viewed as an elite and everything he sets out to do, the elites are screaming "THAT WON"T WORK!!!". 3 years ago, the same establishment types were saying "No inflation", "Well...transitory inflation" to "Well, the rate of inflation is back to where we set our targets" and "GDP is at the highest levels ever!" while everyone is asking if we are stepping into a recession.
I don't agree with a lot of what he is doing, however I do agree that we need to do something different. Our previous leaders and policy makers set us on a path where labor is not valued, unions are despised and greed is good. You can't run a society without labor and protections(both for workers and environmental) and a strict focus on wealth alone leads you to a desolate place.
So, in the event of a new world war they would have two options: one, maintain naval power superiority and thus ensure that the things that the US needs to come from over-seas still come through, or two, return to autarky and economic isolationism (which, up to a point, they could sustain based on their home resources) and hope for the best. It's interesting that the current US administration is doing a combination of the two, see the debacle for the Panama Canal when it comes to my first point, and the return to economic isolationism and even hints of wanting to incorporate Canada when it comes to my second point.
On the other hand Air Power has never ever won a big war all by itself. The only war that let's say was won via said Air Power alone was the 1999 war against Milosevic's Yugoslavia, and, possibly, the First Gulf War. But the US won't be able to win a conventional war against China or/and Russia based on Air Power alone, never.
Transporting tanks, artillery, vehicles, is difficult by air when done at scale. Air extraction of a SEAL team is done by helicopters. And those helicopters need to land somewhere. They need fuel and crews and supplies. Forward deployed ground bases are logistically more difficult than having a carrier group off the coast.
As a missile platform, there are certainly alternatives such as the 747 or even space based weaponry, but naval vessels are more than simply weapons platforms.
Also air-based missile platforms depend on a guarantee of air superiority —- it would be naïve to suggest that the U.S. would have that air superiority in all theaters of battle.
Ukraine has sunk Russian shipping at dock with ALCM or at sea with their homegrown ASCM.
Unless a visitor is unaware that this is a US website, then it would actually help be more informative than otherwise.
And if a visitor is already aware, what difference does it make?
Not because this website happens to be operated by a US company, but because of US defaultism. If on the internet somebody forgets that other countries exist or that people from other nationalities might be involved, they are American. Occasionally somebody complains how non-inclusive it is, but for the most part we all ignore it
Is it not?
Why do we need to be careful not to offend the Chinese? Unless we are worried they are tracking HN accounts?
Or maybe you are saying, it should be more specific, and say "US" instead of "_ours_".
The US used to subsidize the salaries of US merchant marines on ships (US salaries are higher than Filipino ones) so that there would be a trained population, but that was stopped in the 1980s because subsidies are bad, so there are hardly any US merchant marines any more.
The US government used to own transport boats and lease them to US shipping companies, but they've not bothered to build news ones in decades, and so most transport ships are foreign owned. If there's a war, and you need ship matériel to the war zone, do you think commercial ships will enter it? Perhaps the US government should eschew the Free Market™ a bit and own the means of transportation.
The point of the Jones Act—or at least that one particular section that a lot of folks tend to talk about—is to have US citizens and US ships available in case of war. But given US prices relative to the prices for other countries, it costs more, and the US has not been willing to pay the premium to support that readiness.
Edit: The channel What's Going on with Shipping? has a number of videos on the topic of the what people call "the Jones Act", but more specifically about Section 27, the cabotage rules. See perhaps these to get a good overview of the topic:
* "The pros and cons of The Jones Act", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOIx-OAvxqQ
* "The Jones Act Makes Shipping More Expensive?", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95om9PGI758
* "Jones Act Debate | Center for Maritime Strategy & Heritage Foundation", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWKz3psejb0
* "The Passage of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920: The Jones Act", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O_EhPbmr74
* Optional more: https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping/search?query=jones%20a...
So a repeal of the Jones act would need to be coupled to an extended investment program into the shipbuilding sector. Say, something like how the SEA economic miracle worked, by requiring, as a condition for various subsidies, the yards to export a certain % of the production in order to ensure prices are competitive.
Even so, given US wage levels it's a fantasy to believe that US shipyards could compete with, say, China. But there are shipyards in other high-income countries e.g. in Europe that manage to survive through a combination of various subsidies and focusing on high-end specialized vessels such as cruise ships, icebreakers etc.
This is what I don't get.
The Jones Act is about keeping ship building at home, in the US. So protective. By locking out foreign competition. It's a 'protective' law, to isolate and protect US industry.
How will opening the US to buy and operate foreign ships, somehow make the US build more US ships?
Look at other Industries that have been outsourced.
Once markets are open, the manufacturing "leaves" the US.
So how will repealing the Jones Act somehow reverse what is seen in every other industry.
There are industries the US should support for defense, you don't want to be buying your weapons from your enemies. See the drive to bring Chips back to the US.
Allowing wonton outsourcing is finally being seen as maybe not a forgone good.
You mean like all the (e.g.) garment and other factories competed against foreign manufacturers… and the companies decided to close up shop and move overseas?
The main garments that are still made in the US are those for the military due to domestic production regulations in procurement rules.
Steel making and ship building are done with heavy machinery, at least to a sufficient extent that I would expect wages to matter less.
However, it's not uncommon for a company or industry to fail to develop a competitive advantage, and then go bankrupt and disappear.
Without the Jones Act, it's quite possible that the US shipbuilding industry may have ended up even more moribund than it is now, decades ago.
Without it, we probably wouldn't have a thriving US shipbuilding industry, but we would have significantly (probably orders of magnitude more) intra-state shipping, which would require more ships that would most likely come from close allies which would boost _their_ shipping industry.
For strategic purposes, obviously having our own shipping industry would be better, but that's apparently not on the table. I'll take, as a close second best option, an improved shipbuilding industry of our allies, with a heaping side helping of massive economic benefit.
But, not seeing how allowing foreign built ships, with foreign crews, owned by foreign companies, somehow leads to a stronger US shipping industry.
(Nuclear option: US Navy ensures Freedom of the Seas only for US flagged vessels. Your Liberia-flagged ship gets attacked by pirates, or even some state actor? Ask the Liberian navy to come to your help. And no, this isn't really a serious suggestion that would be in the US interest.)
Guess this thread overall had devolved into 'just repeal' and let the 'free market' toughen up the Americans that have gotten weak. Free market will sort it out.
Subsidies and Investments are correct, but deemed 'bad' by the people wanting to cut government.
Because the US can't "easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on." It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that. Even if you could manage to get a program like that passed, there's a large chance it'd get cut in 10 years by some libertarian to pay for yet another tax cut.
> We have no problem with subsidizing farmers and roads so why not shipbuilders if it keeps our navy competitive?
That's only because of how the Constitution apportions senators and the electoral college. Farmers are spread out in a way that gives them disproportionate political power.
Just slap a "national security" label on it. semi-/s
I need to weigh in on this, I think. I don't know of many libertarians that would refuse to make an exception for strategic industries... you can't buy your ammunition from the enemy, even if their price is half of the domestic cost. And you can't even really be sure who your enemies will be when you find yourself desperately needing it.
If there was ever any objection to these subsidies and programs, I suggest that we might look at the neocons and neoliberals instead of the libertarians.
>That's only because of how the Constitution apportions senators and the electoral college. Farmers are spread out in a way that gives them disproportionate political power.
Well, about that... I sort of think maybe our food supply is also one of those strategic industries. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
It is, but our political system isn't wise enough to care. It's pissed away a lot of other strategic industries for stupid reasons in the mean time. And with the nationalization of politics, I'm not sure farm state senators will continue to have the ability to focus on serving their constituents' interests in the future like they have.
Possibly. If I were in Congress, I would try to do something about it, but I'm not and pretty impotent in this regard.
>I can't imagine cold-war-era US would have been happy buying their telephone networking equipment and fax machines from the USSR
But we have to pretend that China is our friend. We have to pretend that even if they have some internal problems, that they're on track to becoming this reasonable democracy. We have to pretend that the Han are a people who are willing to coexist as equals on this planet with non-Han, and that though they've always historically been concerned only with their traditionally held geography, that they won't have [cough]Tibet[cough] expansionist ambitions on that continent or others.
I don't know what could be done about all of this. If, for instance, there were another president who wanted to do something about it, and tried to spur redevelopment of our industry and economy, even ignoring all the political bullshit he'd have to navigate... what happens when the secret talks somehow leak to the Chinese intelligence servies (as they inevitably would), and they start interfering before he could even start? Not that I like the idea of a president taking such power, but the idea that 535 Congressmen should instead do it openly (or could do it secretly) when the Chinese would sabotage such efforts is sort of absurd. Painted into a corner, and the people who painted us here are all senile or dead of old age.
Of course. I don't have any answers. Because I agree, protectionism creates "Boeing's". It's almost like global unfettered capitalism is un-stoppable and leading us to a dystopia of lowest bidder, cheapest labor possible.
An article from 2016, "Think nothing is made in America? Output has doubled in three decades":
* https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-outp...
Manufacturing share of GDP has declined, the number of jobs has declined (due to automation), but output is up. The US the second biggest country (16%) after China (32%):
* https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/manufactu...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing#List_of_countrie...
Take for example: Medicine, we mandate doctors go through ~11 years of education before they are qualified and then complain about the cost and say that we can get the procedure done in MX for cheaper. Of course, Med school starting at 17 and practicing at 25 is cheaper than what we do. https://www.reddit.com/r/premed/comments/1ddxrt2/considering...
Steel: We want to carbon neutral steel production vs China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy63PEgmm8w
I am not against regulation and safety, I think we should all have clean air and water safe medicine and good food. The only way for us in the west to get that however is to pay the cost.
If we aren't willing to pay the cost then what we are doing is robbing our children, not only of a future with a clean safe earth but also of their economic future as while their peers in lax countries will have to deal with the pollution they will also have work and knowledge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
Economics is far from an exact science though, there's many other possible factors.
The only way to solve American manufacturing woes is to start punishing people who are willing to sell out their country for shareholder profit.
Should have done it 60 years ago, but better late than never.
Which is why you stop exclusively using market forces to determine how industry should be spread out around the globe.
Like it avoids certain dock taxes/tariffs. Tuned correctly, the US Supermax over time could eke out enough profit that some would be tenable.
Unfortunately the best middle step is probably going to be convincing the naval yards to make some civilian ships, first.
Wages and steel.
China is the world's largest steel producer (US makes ~4% of global output). Reminder that Nippon Steel wanted to buy US Steel and (AIUI) keep US plants open, but that was killed by both Biden and Trump:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_acquisition_of_U.S._S...
If US management/ownership cannot keep a company alive, perhaps let non-US folks give it a try if they're willing keep US plants open. The world learned lots of lessons from Toyota (who learned from Denning), perhaps Nippon Steel can teach a few things.
Intel fell behind on semiconductors and now Phoenix is turning into an outlying suburb of Taipei while the children of TSMC engineers are making the local school district look like magicians.
All the US has to do is subsidize one of the Korean heavy conglomerates, probably Hyundai, and get them to start pumping out cargo boats out of say Louisiana or Georgia with the promise of a government buyer. This problem goes away by 2032.
So after a while Taiwan is no longer needed and China can just take it. I am curious if Taiwan's government cares about this potential course of events?
>"All the US has to do is subsidize one of the Korean heavy conglomerates, probably Hyundai, and get them to start pumping out cargo boats out of say Louisiana or Georgia with the promise of a government buyer."
Again you think that Korea would not care about moving their strategic industries somewhere else?
lol, as if amphibious assault against a country that has been preparing invasion for 70 years, as well as a country that is at the forefront of electronics, is that easy.
yes, China is building tons of ships. but each ship, which cost a few hundred million each, can be sunk by Taiwan's advanced missile systems, for a few million per missile. Each ship needs to be fueled properly, which is also extremely hard logistical task, just ask Russia. And these ships move slowly across a region that is heavily monitored, making them easily sank. And once enough ships sink near the landing area, it would be even harder for other ships to make it to the landing beaches.
You might want to update your understanding of the balance of forces in Asia.
For example: "China’s military has the capability to land ground forces on Taiwan within as little as one week after imposing a naval blockade on the island, according to a Japanese government analysis of Chinese military exercises conducted last year." [1]
Only the United States military could challenge the PRC in the western Pacific. But even that is not a certainty: "Indeed, the overall balance of conventional military power along China’s borders has shifted dramatically in China’s favor." [2]
It's not the 1900s anymore. The PLA isnt a peasant army. It's every bit as modern, and in some cases more so than even the US military.
https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/politics/defense-security/20...
https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Articl...
you're using this one little quote to signify that China can take Taiwan? get real. that just means some boots will be on the ground, doesn't mean that these boots will make it past the beach. and naval blockade has very little chance of succeeding past a few days, when China will immediately be sanctioned by all the countries, leading to its collapse
> get real.
Hmm, who is more credible, the literal government of Japan or some rando.
This shift in the balance of power has been on-going for well over 10 years now. I've been following this for many years, so it's jarring to read very un-informed opinions on the balance of power in WESPAC, especially as it relates to PRC and Taiwan.
Read the many warnings from the various heads of INDOPACOM: China’s Sea Control Is a Done Deal, ‘Short of War With the U.S.’ [1]
OR
"Indeed, the overall balance of conventional military power along China’s borders has shifted dramatically in China’s favor." [2]
By the way, this is against the USA, not just Taiwan, which has a joke of a military.
> China will immediately be sanctioned by all the countries, leading to its collapse
LOL at this absurdly ignorant take.
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/world/asia/south-china-se...
[2] - https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Articl...
most likely, without a U.S. backer, they would just more closely integrate their economies and this would eventually result in a political solution
Probably few people here realize that China settled the majority of its land border disputes (12 of 14) through negotiation.
China, by and large, gave up much more territory than it acquired for each border settlement.
What happens if a long conflict breaks out between China and the US can't rebuild capacity lost in the initial phase of the war because China takes out that Korean ship building capacity?
With a capacity 260x times that of America the Chinese will be able to rebuild an overwhelming naval capacity, especially if the war technology turns to cheap, mass produced (semi)autonomous machines as seems to be happening in Ukraine?
Ships are one thing but really matters is the industrial capacity to build missiles that will be the immediate bottleneck. Many American missiles have a lead time measured in months to years and wargames scenarios for a conflict over Taiwan show the US exhausting most of their antiship missiles within weeks.
Once that happens the US will need to retreat from the area and the Chinese will be able to mass produce ships and probably missiles to hunt down any lingering American ships.
America will effectively lose their dominance of the seas and certainly the region.
For that matter, why aren't we spinning up a few factories to build artillery shells?
As with most problems in the US today - short term thinking and seemingly lack of any sort of long-term strategic planning whatsoever.
I was a teenager when they were shutting down the (mostly mothballed, but still kept in enough working order to spin back up) ammunition factories in my state. I thought even then it was a stupid short-sighted move, and it's only proven worse since then.
Not only do we not have any production capacity to speak of - we also are now completely reliant on a handful of plants that are vulnerable to two or three well-executed attacks to take them completely offline. We entirely lack geographic diversity when before our arms manufacturing was spread throughout the country and fairly resilient.
As a nation we completely forgot the lessons learned in WWII. Production capacity is almost all that matters so long as you can hold the front long enough to spin it up. China is quite obviously orders of magnitude better positioned for this in the modern era. Perhaps even moreso than the US was in the 1940's given the types of arms that are expected to win future wars.
We launch ballistic missiles at each other. Probably kill 500-800M Chinese and 100-175M Americans.
China hawks love fantasizing about this stuff. Reality is the as Ukraine demonstrates, direct conflict between reasonably advanced states is a tarpit. A hot war between the top tier states is armageddon.
If China starts sinking US ships half the people reading this thread will die before ever hearing about it. That doesn't mean China would never sink a US ship.
The longer term strategic outlook for the US is… not great. Why would China poke the bear when the bear has teeth? Wait for America’s internal instability to escalate, then roll into Taipei without a shot fired.
China is #1, but Korea is #2, and Japan is #3:
* https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-dominate-global-s...
Is Japan a low-wage country?
Given that the US shipyards are 'full' with US Navy work, ordering a bunch of merchant marine ships from our allies would boost them and give us trust-worthy vessels.
While civilian-like designs are built there, encourage those same allies to build US-stationed shipyards and order a number of military-oriented designs to help boost domestic knowledge:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Sealift_Command
Note: building one of a design is not good, and two is probably just as bad. If you're going to order ships, putting in an order of >6 is the only way to get economies of scale.
Another option would be to order civilian-like designs with a 'basic' shell, and then do retrofitting for military needs domestically.
Both Canada and Mexico would be obvious allies for this, and it would be a win/win solution for less sensitive ships / ship components (e.g. finish shell, then fit in US shipyards).
> Another option would be to order civilian-like designs with a 'basic' shell, and then do retrofitting for military needs domestically.
This has historically been the biggest problem with the US Navy -- they're really dumb / bad at specifications.
Imho, the US would be well-served by taking ultimate control of ship design out of the Navy's sole hands, and infusing someone with a cost-focused incentive into the process.
It's a terrible joke at this point that the USN starts with "We'll pick an off the shelf foreign design" and then customizes it so much it's no longer mass producible.
Yeah…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_trade_war_w...
> and it would be a win/win solution for less sensitive ships / ship components (e.g. finish shell, then fit in US shipyards).
Canadian shipyards are actually relatively busy nowadays:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Shipbuilding_Strategy
To the point that some things will not be built locally:
* https://news.usni.org/2024/11/08/canadian-officials-pricing-...
* https://www.canada.ca/en/public-services-procurement/news/20...
Not sure if some more civilian-leaning building capacity could perhaps be available.
And for optics purposes, all he needs is "some win", not something that materially matters.
But as with all Trumpisms, we'll see. :\
I bring up Canada and Mexico because using their shipyard capacity (especially Mexico) would be a win-win: forex investment in heavy industry for them, competitive labor costs for the US, and the US Navy gets recapitalized.
Have you tried listening to his speeches at rallies? Not the clips or extracts, and not transcripts, but the full speeches from start to finish.
Dude is all over the place. It's often hard to tell what planet he's on.
During one of the presidential debates he went on about immigrants eating cats and dogs.
Or at least, he's crazy in the same way George W Bush was dumb.
Which is to say, it's a facade they play because they find it works with their base and to their advantage.
I do not believe it is a façade in either case (Bush, Trump).
It's a mistake to ignore facts because they're inconvenient to what we want to believe.
And thinking Trump only won 2 elections because of other people is an difficult fit with reality.
Just because you or I dislike someone doesn't mean we should discount them.
The highest concern for the Navy isn't cost, it is will the ship survive in war. You can make a navy ship a lot cheaper by sacrificing armor and reliability. But those are thing the navy doesn't want to sacrifice. Cost is important, but it is at most #3 on the list of concerns.
Since I have family in the Navy, and want those ships to protect me if there is a war I agree with the navy. Cost is important, but it is not the most important thing.
Given that the Navy claims it needs more ships, and god knows extended and double-pump deployments bear that out, it might be better served by having 2 less capable ships than 1 more capable ship.
In the same way that the M3 and M4 beat Germany, despite being individually inferior to mid and late war German tanks.
Furthermore, the clusterfuck that is the Constellation-class frigate procurement program proves that the Navy is objectively bad at understanding how shifting requirements interacts with build time and cost.
PS: You're not the only person with family in the Navy.
>The average salary in Japan is 6,200,000 Japanese Yen (JPY) or 39818 USD per year in 2024 (as per the exchange rate in May 2024). https://www.timedoctor.com/blog/average-salary-in-japan
The low wages and overtime culture that exists there is the greatest contributor to their lack of marriage and low birthrate in my opinion.
Korea has the same issue from my understanding.
Yes, I know.
> Is Japan a low-wage country?
I never claimed that in my post. E.g. means "exempli gratia", or "for example". Thus the statement "shipyards in other high-income countries e.g. in Europe" meaning "shipyards in other high-income countries for example in Europe". Which does not preclude other high-income countries existing outside Europe.
And material costs
The jones act does not particularly protect US shipbuilding, the issue is it destroyed the customer base for US shipbuilding by making domestic marine transport uneconomical. It is a protection for the auto industry by making road transport of goods more cost competitive. Modify the jones act, start shipping things domestically by ship, suddenly there's a big market for ships.
You seem to be omitting the fact that the US sank pretty much every non-allied boat in the ocean during WWII and bombed every shipyard outside of England. That created a MASSIVE advantage.
Ironically, the end of WW2 actually hurt US shipbuilding because there was a huge glut of surplus ships on the market and for a brief time a massive drop in trade. British ship builders actually took the title of world's largest shipbuilder back after WW2, producing nearly half of all tonnage in the next decade as Europe rebuilt its merchant fleets.
The countries that had their shipyards destroyed in the war built new shipyards with better technology. They took the lead after that, Japan obviously being the biggest winner in the late 20th century.
Not really: https://www.cato.org/blog/subsidies-misplaced-shipbuilding-n...
Also: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UJwLSBXvXcNTMfApNGgJHJTSCD0...
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships
Good point about the Jones Act acting to make domestic road (and rail) more attractive. Then again, aren't domestic road and rail freight also protected by similar cabotage laws?
Yes, I think so. In wartime, a government can order them to do so. For example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Mauretania_(1906)#First_Wo...):
“Mauretania was planned to replace the Lusitania on the Transatlantic run after the Lusitania was sunk, but she was ordered by the British government to serve as a troop ship to carry British soldiers during the Gallipoli campaign.”
In case of war, those ships get commandeered and taken by whoever thinks they can get away with it.
Ships are also not nearly as prevalent as they were in WW2 (as international capable jet transport didn't really exist then). Vietnam used troop transports, but I don't think Desert Storm used much beyond airplanes.
Bulk goods and supplies are another matter.
As someone who supported loading a whole division's worth of vehicles onto ships during the Iraq war, I would like to know what you're basing that on. Sure, the people go by plane, but the people represent an overwhelming minority of the total tonnage moved to deploy a unit.
While we didn't get the ships, we did get a 100 foot railway in Canada: https://maritime-executive.com/article/judge-rules-that-cana...
It wasn’t killed by foreigners, it was killed, just like the railroads, by the interstate highway system and trucks. We don’t need 150 piers and train freight/ferry terminals in NYC because we can stage trucks from a limitless number of truck terminals. Less capital cost, less labor, less wasted inventory, less chokepoints (key infrastructure, unions, etc). The guys who operate the Staten Island ferry make as much as 5-7 bus drivers.
You need a smaller number of large players with multimodal integration. Containers, tankers and special purpose for oceangoing and tugs/barges for near water.
The Navy is at risk because our defense procurement infrastructure is tied to the nostalgia of old admirals with dreams of fighting WW2, and struggle to identify the next thing. The main viable warships afloat are submarines and the capacity to grow that is in such a sorry state we basically keep the yard running.
I don't think this is a fair comparison without considering the subsidies that go to trucking, which are substantial: the interstate highway system, manufacturer and consumer auto subsidies, municipal tax codes and development that favors single family homes (further bolstering auto and road industries).
Consider that most of the damage done to roads is done by heavy trucks, but the cost is spread across everyone. That is effectively a huge subsidy.
In the case of NYC and other cities, it shows the edges/limits of your argument. The entire waterfront and west side was dedicated to rail, industry and shipping to support the city and the port. The meat packing district was… a bunch of slaughterhouses. We traded that infrastructure for highways. There’s good and bad aspects to that.
I have to think there is some weakness around re-fueling. Even if there is non-stop re-fueling planes.
The 747 seems more 'exposed' than a ship.
? genuinely curious.
This is making the classic mistake of assuming that a platform being vulnerable means it is not useful - which couldn't be further from the truth.
The US and NATO are heavily missile based militaries these days, and a ship is an efficient way to move a large amount of heavy ordnance to current theatres of operation. The endurance of a warship with stand off munitions in supporting land forces it's much higher than any air borne assets and a lot cheaper to run and that's very much the key: money at these scales is far from unlimited, and just because an aircraft could do any particular job doesn't mean you can sustain aircraft doing every job in a conflict (ala there's a reason special forces aren't just regular forces).
If local management had any interest in improving they would have started years ago... So they all need to be kicked out (presumably anyone who did care was forced out over the years) and start over.
The problem is that Korean and Japanese shipyards are far more vulnerable to Chinese attack than shipyards in North America would be. But Korean shipbuilding companies have been interested in buying and building shipyards in the US, which is helpful.
Another factor is the desire to retire federal government debt by dollar devaluation. Onshoring of manufacturing by high tariffs would be preparatory for this.
Modern destroyers are capable of staying on station almost indefinitely and defending themselves and allied vessels from nearly any existing airborne threat.
Such a platform needs to be on station and close to assets at risk so it can interdict. You would need to orbit these platforms continuously to provide protection, and would need more than one of them at all times.
Missile defense has been one of the biggest topics in international security over the last year, and is Trump's biggest defense priority.
This is not a good sales pitch.
Depends on the purpose. For patrolling, shipping, and disaster relief, it's a lot cheaper and more flexible (in terms of utility et al) than airplanes.
You go to South Korea or Taiwan and all their subways are also bomb shelters, but something like The Boring Company, environmentally amazing, strategically amazing and everyone thinks it's funny to put it down.
There's a massive problem with attitude and IQ in the internet population.