Surface Ships Need More Offensive Punch, Outlook

I suspect it will be the usual process of declaring a problem, pretending to fix it, and moving on regardless. But perhaps something more concrete will happen.
 
Not military shipbuilding, but has possibilities in that regard:
gcaptain.com

CMA CGM Considering Building Containerships in U.S., CEO Says

CMA CGM is in talks with shipyards about the possibility of having medium-sized container vessels built in the United States, the French shipping group's CEO Rodolphe Saade told Les Echos newspaper.
gcaptain.com gcaptain.com
 
Josh_TN said:
I suspect it will be the usual process of declaring a problem, pretending to fix it, and moving on regardless. But perhaps something more concrete will happen.
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Given other statements on the matter and Trump being a businessman first instead of a politician, I think he intends to actually make efforts to fix things.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Given other statements on the matter and Trump being a businessman first instead of a politician, I think he intends to actually make efforts to fix things.
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Trump is not a businessman; he’s a showman. He is very successful at that, with most of his money coming from The Apprentice and the licensing of his name. His actual business record is atrocious and historically his political attention span exceedingly limited. I very much doubt any of his changes fix anything, especially something as complex and long term as US ship production. We shall see. Currently DOGE cannot make it through a week without reversing itself and every part of the economy is flashing warning signs, so color me skeptical than ship production increases in the next four years.
 
Josh_TN said:
Trump is not a businessman; he’s a showman. He is very successful at that, with most of his money coming from The Apprentice and the licensing of his name. His actual business record is atrocious and historically his political attention span exceedingly limited. I very much doubt any of his changes fix anything, especially something as complex and long term as US ship production. We shall see. Currently DOGE cannot make it through a week without reversing itself and every part of the economy is flashing warning signs, so color me skeptical than ship production increases in the next four years.
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Military ship production, especially submarines, requires clearing and hiring nuclear welders.

That's just flat time consuming to do. My clearance took over a year to finalize, for example, and I was a relatively straight-forward example.

I would not expect to even see a real effect on production for at least 2 years. By which I mean being able to deliver 2x Virginia-class per year.
 
And that's several months old (the news that is) at this point. Don't know if it's anywhere else here but that should be a giant red flag. They aren't going to Japan with that.
 
Maybe, as some wags have pointed out, they're going to Gaza.
 
sferrin said:
Why would China be invading Gaza?
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Didn't say they'd be invading Gaza, Sferrin, just that, as per Sal Mercogliano's comment above, here's a joint logistics over the shore op that could actually work to deliver aid to the people suffering in Gaza, unlike the US's Gaza pier fiasco.

sferrin said:
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Lol yes, just watched this. HI Sutton leaping to conclusions I think. Platforms like this could be used in a variety of situations, not just invading Taiwan.
 
jeffb said:
Lol yes, just watched this. HI Sutton leaping to conclusions I think. Platforms like this could be used in a variety of situations, not just invading Taiwan.
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It is incredibly hard to imagine that Taiwan is not the primary intended use. That does not mean that such an invasion is imminent or unavoidable, or even that these are not used for some other invasion (or perhaps even humanitarian aid). But the PRC clearly wants a military option for Taiwan and has expressly stated so numerous times.
 
I also would hazard to guess that these platforms are very slow and rather short ranged. There cannot be a lot of room for engines, navigation equipment and visibility seems quite minimal, and the hull form is hardly quick or efficient. That implies they are intended for relatively local use.
 
jeffb said:
Didn't say they'd be invading Gaza, Sferrin, just that, as per Sal Mercogliano's comment above, here's a joint logistics over the shore op that could actually work to deliver aid to the people suffering in Gaza, unlike the US's Gaza pier fiasco.



Lol yes, just watched this. HI Sutton leaping to conclusions I think. Platforms like this could be used in a variety of situations, not just invading Taiwan.
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Buuuuuuuut, I think it would be a stretch to think they weren't developed specifically with Taiwan in mind.
 
americanaffairsjournal.org

America’s National Security Wonderland - American Affairs Journal

While America is battling exhaustion and political polarization at home, it is now facing something it’s never faced abroad: it is locked into a security competition against multiple opponents who, when taken together, are in fact vastly superior to America in terms of industrial capacity. This...
americanaffairsjournal.org americanaffairsjournal.org

This article explains pretty much everything.

I had many questions, now it makes sense.
 
shin_getter said:
americanaffairsjournal.org

America’s National Security Wonderland - American Affairs Journal

While America is battling exhaustion and political polarization at home, it is now facing something it’s never faced abroad: it is locked into a security competition against multiple opponents who, when taken together, are in fact vastly superior to America in terms of industrial capacity. This...
americanaffairsjournal.org americanaffairsjournal.org

This article explains pretty much everything.

I had many questions, now it makes sense.
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I have ... issues with some of the points that essay raises.

To buttress this point with a non-Army example, a major theme covered in the reporting of the 2010s USS Fitzgerald and USS McCain collisions (which together led to the loss of seventeen sailors and constitute two of the most serious disasters the Navy has ever suffered in peacetime) was that ship captains were expected to sail even if their personnel situation or maintenance backlogs should not have allowed it; captains lied to their admirals who in turn lied to their political superiors. Rather than grapple with how lying had become an institutional requirement inside the Seventh Fleet, the Navy instead chose to blame these accidents on the ship captains themselves, even though the captains had repeatedly issued warnings to their superiors about the risk of serious accidents
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No, Naval Reactors Himself most certainly DID NOT blame the Captains. His report absolutely DID call all that out. Yes, the USN sent the biggest asshole admiral in the entire USN out to find Root Causes of those collisions. An admiral from Submarines, where "Sir we can't do that" is an answer expected and required from an E3 to the Commanding Officer, as long as it's true. (I couldn't tell you how many times I've told an officer, "Dammit sir don't do that, you'll f*ing break it," occasionally with physically stopping the officer in question.)

The Captains were "blamed" because the Commanding Officer is always responsible for the ship. You run aground or into a ship actively attempting to hit you? You're fired. No discussion. Sailor attempts/commits suicide? If you knew sailor was suicidal, you're fired.

Why did the Captains lie and say that their ship was ready? Because if they told the truth, Big Navy would sack them and find a captain that would tell the Navy "yes sir, we're ready to go out to sea". Which was not an accepted practice in submarines then. I sure as hell hope it still isn't acceptable.

Why wasn't the ship ready? Delayed and deferred shipyard availabilities, such that no two ships of the same class in Seventh Fleet were actually operating using the same systems and equipment. Constant personnel shortfalls made up by temporarily assigning crew from a ship in port to a ship at sea. The personnel at the helm when those collisions happened had no experience with how the ship they were on operated, because the ship they knew worked differently.
 
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bobbymike said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1907785292163276948
View: https://x.com/mason_8718/status/1907785292163276948?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1907785292163276948%7Ctwgr%5E2347c6fdd8e501f38926c50770cca9cd78bb3893%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finstapundit.com%2F713880%2F
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While an incredibly attractive prospect, there are three key issues in my eyes.

For one, outsourcing shipbuilding is what brought the US shipbuilding fiasco about, at least in large part together with the peace dividend. So outsourcing what's left, is that really helpful?

Secondly, unlike Japan who's very much at odds with China and views them as an existential threat really, the ROK has much warmer relations with the PRC, on top of being far more worried about their ironically rather docile northern neighbors third and internal strife second. So I see US shipbuilding in Korea at risk from espionage and perhaps even sabotage.

Lastly, the proximity of the ROK towards the PRC compared to CONUS obviously puts every bit of US shipbuilding there at risk of intense missile strikes in a PRC-Taiwan scenario.
 
Hanse said:
I'd take them up on it while we expand our shipyards and get people trained up. (I'd have them building Zumwalts though.;) )
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A huge ton of Constellations would be preferable, no? If the design is actually complete by now, of course.
 
Grey Havoc said:
www.navalnews.com

Japan could licence produce Mk70 containerized missile launcher - Naval News

Lockheed Martin has revealed to the author that it is conducting preliminary discussions with Japanese counterparts regarding the licensed production of the Mk70, the company's latest containerized Vertical Launching System (VLS).
www.navalnews.com www.navalnews.com
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I keep thinking that this could have solved a lot of Japan's issues with AEGIS Ashore, by allowing the launchers to move to places where booster fallback would not have been an issue.
 
Something I feel gets losses a lot in this conversation.

We need to understand that American shipbuilding is fundamentally uncompetitive. South Korea and the PRC can build ships at twice the speed for half the price. And this isn’t a coincidence.

Shipbuilding is not cheap, especially for the yard. Labor is expensive. OSHA lawsuits are expensive. Compliance with environmental laws is expensive. Developing new infrastructure is expensive. Being forced to eat the loss from fixed price contracts is expensive. If the yards want to maintain any sort of profit margin, operating costs must be kept to the bare minimum. This is the reason McDonald’s pays more than entry level positions at HII.

But those are American yards. South Korea has less strict OSHA laws, less strict environmental regulations, and their people will work 60 hours a week for mere pennies. For the lack of better phrasing, white people are expensive, as the cost of living here is more expensive. Doing virtually everything in America is expensive. And regardless of who is in the White House, that trend won’t reverse.

Simply put, there is no scenario where the free market will allow domestic shipbuilding to regenerate to historical levels. The mere “survival” of the domestic shipbuilding industry is solely because of protectionist economic policies that mandate domestic construction of American-flagged vessels.

If the Jones Act dies, or we start building ships in Korea, the U.S. will permanent stop building ships. And there will be no recovery. The fact of the matter is American shipbuilding will never be competitive. It will never be able to stand on its own in the free market. There’s a reason why nearly all domestic orders from the federal government.
 

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