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Monday, March 4, 2024

We’re Going To Fight With What We Have

One of the characteristics of WWII, which made the defeat of Germany and Japan a foregone conclusion, was the vast industrial capacity of the US and the ability to convert that capacity to wartime production needs.  In contrast, today we lack the sheer foundation of industry and, for a host of reasons, the ability to convert what we do have to wartime needs and to scale up the capacity that we do have.
 
Why, you ask, can’t we scale up and convert the industry that we do have to wartime needs?  As an illustrative example, recall that in WWII, auto manufacturers were able to convert from cars to tanks, aircraft, and other equipment.  Ford Motor Company, for example, produced B-24 bombers and M-4 tanks, among other items.  Conversion to wartime production was possible, in large part, due to the fact that civilian automobiles and military vehicles and aircraft used, basically, the same equipment.  An M-4 tank wasn’t that different from an automobile.  Bombers and tanks used radial engines which were, themselves, just automobile engines in a different shape than an in-line car engine.  And so on.
 
Now, consider a modern Abrams tank or a B-2/B-21 bomber as compared to a typical automobile.  There’s no comparison and little similarity!  Turbine engines have little in common with car engines.  Advanced armors have little in common with automobile sheet metal.  Exotic materials like titanium, composites, etc. have little in common with sheet metal and run of the mill steel and aluminum.  Forming, welding, and manipulating exotic materials requires exotic skills.  Stealth coatings have nothing in common with automobile paint.  Micron tolerances have nothing in common with automobile level tolerances.  And so on.
 
Yes, given years of time to retrain workers, revamp factories, master advanced production techniques, and so forth, we could convert but we aren’t going to have years of time in a war.  If we can’t convert quickly, we aren’t going to convert at all.
 
Let’s consider some other factors that impair our ability to convert industry to wartime needs.
 
Exotic Components – Much of military production incorporates and depends on exotic components such as computer chips.  There is almost nothing the military uses that does not use computer chips.  Unfortunately, our chip production capacity is maxed out, right now, as evidenced by the recent, severe chip shortage.  Even now, in peacetime, we desperately need additional computer chip capacity but a new chip factory takes a minimum of $10 billion and five years to build, according to the research firm, International Data Corporation (IDC).[1]  We have no hope of commissioning new chip production facilities in a useful time frame when war comes.
 
Exotic Materials – Many of our most advanced military components require exotic rare earths, metals, alloys, and composites that we have insufficient supplies of or lack entirely.  The bulk of our rare earth supply comes from China!  I think it’s safe to say China won’t be supplying us with rare earths during a war.
 
Factories – Over the last several decades, we’ve allowed (forced, through unwise legislation and tax regulations) much of our manufacturing to move overseas.  Even if we could convert existing factories, we simply don’t have enough factories remaining to meet wartime demands.  We’re currently trying to increase weapons production and failing badly and that’s just while trying to satisfy the needs of a minor, regional war between Ukraine and Russia.  How much worse will the weapon production deficiency be in a war with China?
 
Work Force – We currently have a severe shortage of skilled labor.  Our shortsighted attempt to force every high school student to go to college or be branded a failure has depleted our supply of skilled trades workers.  Once upon a time, we could train new people fairly quickly on basic welding, pipefitting, and electrical skills but the advanced nature of our technology now requires advanced capabilities.  Now, it would take years of training to produce a worker capable of producing our advanced technology.
 
 
Conclusion
 
The conclusion is short, simple, and painfully obvious.  We have little industrial capacity for war, at the moment, and even less potential to convert and scale up our industry for war.  The implication of this is that we’re going to have to fight a war with, essentially, what we have going into it.  We won’t be quickly converting and gearing up production capabilities and capacities.
 
This means that we need to rethink the type of weapons and inventories we’re maintaining and developing.  Complex weapon systems are the enemy of rapid production and, in war, rapid production is one of the most important keys to victory.  We need to ask ourselves whether somewhat simpler systems that can be rapidly produced is a better way to go than bleeding edge technologies that require decades to develop and produce?  Are hundreds of thousands of dumb bombs better than multi-million dollar precision guided missiles the inventory of which will be depleted inside a month of war?  Remember, the enemy will be facing the same problem although China seems to have a better industrial base to start with (courtesy, in large measure, of us!).
 
 
Solutions
 
What can we do to put ourselves in a better industrial position?
 
Simplify.  We need to simplify our overly complex technology.  Every weapon system we develop needs to pass through the filter of rapid production.  It doesn’t matter how good a weapon is if we can’t produce useful quantities in short time frames.  Ask the Germans how the Tiger tank, Me-262, and other wonder weapons worked out for them.
 
Reclaim Production.  We need to bring production back to America by modifying our laws, regulations, tariffs, and trade relations so as to make it more profitable to produce at home than abroad.  If we do that, industry will return of its own accord.
 
Skilled Trades.  We need to vastly increase our reservoir of skilled trades workers.  We need to end the college push and, instead, push skilled trades as an honorable, rewarding, and lucrative career at the high school level and re-establish high school vocational education training.  Not everyone should go to college.
 
Foreign Dependency.  We need to eliminate our foreign dependency on raw materials.  For example, we have abundant rare earths but our regulations discourage the mining and refining of them.  We need to treat defense-critical raw materials as a national imperative and establish a special category of regulations that allow their production without undue concern about environmental issues.  Note that ‘undue’ does not mean ‘no’ concern.  We just can’t regulate critical raw materials out of existence, as we’ve done.
 
 
 
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60 comments:

  1. This goes against free market capitalism, but we really should have nationalised the shipyards, and kept the Navy Yards under government control. Shipbuilding just can't survive on free market capitalism, it is a strategic asset that needs to be subsidised and supported by the government. Korean and Japanese shipyards are heavily subsidised by their governments, as are the chinese yards (if not owned by the PLAN through shell corporations and cutouts).

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    1. "should have nationalised the shipyards,"

      Using the Post Office, Social Security, IRS, and every other major government organization as examples of the efficiency and effectiveness of government run organizations, why would you think government yards would be successful?

      The few that we have are crumbling, failing facilities that are literally rotting away.

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    2. You are confusing the root cause. Congress power of the purse has nothing to do with running a successful government. One side is constantly swinging the wrecking ball at it and the other side refuses to acknowledge their are issues with it that need resolved. There are other countries where this process plays out much better with a better result.

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    3. "You are confusing the root cause."

      Not at all. The root cause is that the government has made a mess of every organization it's ever established.

      "There are other countries where this process plays out much better with a better result."

      Since we aren't other countries, that would be irrelevant.

      What's your proposed solution?

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    4. May I ask how China has achieved this?
      Why does China not have this problem?
      How can we learn from China?

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    5. "Why does China not have this problem?"

      China is not a utopia. They have their own set of problems. They just don't publicize them.

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    6. "Using the Post Office, Social Security, IRS, and every other major government organization as examples of the efficiency..."

      To be fair, at least the shipyards CAN be run without being totally inefficient. A good example being the Long Beach Naval Shipyard which my father worked at (after retiring from USN '1941-'64) 1968-'80. Of course its long gone now, a victim of BRAC, but when it was closed, it was actually running "in the green", albeit the only public shipyard that was at the time. So while yes the govt usually does horrible at most things- a shipyard doesnt HAVE to be one of them!!

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    7. I did say that the Korean and Japanese shipyards are subsidised by the government. If you don't want to nationalise the shipyards that's fine, but then you need to be propping them up so that there will be a shipyard you can use in the future. There just isn't enough demand for shipbuilding in the American free market economy for shipyards to survive purely on free market.

      I'm reminded of the UK, which sold off their last remaining artillery barrel factory, because it was unprofitable to keep running. Now they can't spool up replacement barrels for their existing artillery guns - and british being british, they always want custom bespoke solutions instead of buying off the shelf (or American :V)

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    8. "If you don't want to nationalise the shipyards that's fine, but then you need to be propping them up"

      Simply subsidizing shipyards is a bandaid approach that doesn't address the underlying problem which is that we've made it unprofitable to build, own, and operate US shipping due to laws and regulations. We need to change/abolish our laws and regulations and make it profitable again for shippers. If we can do that, they won't need subsidies.

      "There just isn't enough demand for shipbuilding"

      Again, if we can change the laws and regulations, the demand will return.

      Delete
  2. Skilled Trades:
    We have many veterans getting education under variations of the GI bill, why not programs that get them in the ship yards. For less than the cost of a semester of college, they not just go to trade school and apply the rest to housing while they train. I did a similar--now discontinued---veteran's program that paid for an Associates degree when I changed careers.

    Who knows, there might be retraining programs like that already but the actual military branches never tell outgoing service members any of them. The Army base I work at has a small pilot program going to teach outgoing personnel about options, but it is not a service-wide program so they don't even know everything that is available, just what they've been able to dig up.

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    1. Sounds good to me! Possibly we could incentive the effort by offering paid training and housing to outgoing personnel in exchange for, say, two years of shipyard service at the government yards? Just thinking off the top of my head.

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    2. Ex military isn't a large enough labor pool to cover this any more. Right concept though. Work for the betterment of the country for a year or 2 on the cheap and we will get you qualified to have a good career.

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    3. "For less than the cost of a semester of college, they not just go to trade school and apply the rest to housing while they train."

      Actually, our government shipyards, and at least some private ones, already have apprenticeship programs which are actual jobs, with pay, combined with classroom and practical (overseen by experienced tradespeople) work. Perhaps they should be expanded and publicized better.

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    4. And maybe we could go one further (if the govt was serious) and offer a military style program for the youth. Send them to trade schools, pay VHA/BAQ type benefits, then place them at the shipyard (or tank factory, etc) where they put in a mandatory 4-6yrs (probably at a union wage), then offer them GI Bill-esque program, or a bonus to keep doing what theyre doing. I think theres a way to attract lots of younger people with proper pay and future guarantees if we just tried...

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  3. High schools are ahead of CNO, "Employed, Enrolled or Enlisted" has been a popular line for several years. College humanities graduate numbers have been declining for years,
    resulting in department cut backs an shutdowns.
    Progress is being made.

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    1. And replaced by equally useless 'business' courses nearly 400,000 graduates last year compared to less than 50 precision production graduates.

      Psychology alone had more graduates than all engineering graduates last year!

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    2. "Psychology alone had more graduates than all engineering graduates last year!"

      I've pointed this out before. There is no engineer shortage that I'm aware of. If we were to magically graduate fifty million engineering students this year, it wouldn't accomplish a thing since there's no demand. We'd just have fifty million engineers working at McDonalds.

      The problem is that we've farmed out our production and design to foreign companies for a variety of reasons and we need to pull that back through revamping of laws and regulations.

      FYI, from a 2019 labor report there were between 2-4 million engineers in the US, depending on what jobs you choose to lump under the category of 'engineer'.

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  4. "Reclaim Production"
    There are already a lot of restrictions on "only made in America". Part of the problem is that once politicians have slapped that restriction on, the bureaucrats than throw a ton of regulations, restrictions, and other add-ons on top of it. And the bureaucrats aren't even from just one department; some DOD, some OSHA, some congressional staffers , some are the managers of the contractors themselves, and the worst ones of all? The ones in uniform. That is how we got the debacle on the LCS.

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  5. What do you think about making up for the shortfall of US merchant ships with foreign purchases in the short term?
    I am not talking about the crews who should be US merchant marines but the vessels. Our South Korean ally for example makes high quality big merchant ships. Until our own production ramps up, we could purchase them relatively inexpensively.

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    1. The Navy and the government have routinely purchased used merchant ships, as needed. Not sure what you're asking.

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    2. I'm talking about buying new foreign built ships then manning with US mariners. MSC always buys US made merchant ships. Right now there aren't even a hundred cargo ships in the US merchant fleet and production is glacial.

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  6. "We’re Going To Fight With What We Have"
    On that basis what sort of naval war is the US ready for?

    Far from shore, so avoiding mines and land-based missiles; not lasting for more than a few weeks; ... what else? I know; against an enemy that lacks the wit to mine USN harbours so that much of the fleet is locked up.

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    1. Do you have some substantive analysis to offer?

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    2. I had a substantial question. If you fight with what you have what sort of war are you well equipped for? What sorts of war must you strive to avoid?

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    3. " what sort of war are you well equipped for? What sorts of war must you strive to avoid?"

      You know the answer(s) to that. What are you really asking?

      Delete
  7. Your industrial prescriptions are correct, but there are prerequisites missing. Stop denigrating engineers, technicians and production workers. Stop glorifying managers, finance workers, and people on TV. Until engineering is esteemed, many young people will look for other careers.

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    1. Yes, we need a societal awakening. Ideally, the people would recognize the need for themselves but, realistically, it would have to come from the government recognizing all of this as a strategic imperative and would begin a public relations campaign to change career paradigm and re-emphasize skilled trades. Hand in hand with that, we would need to bring industry back to the US so as to create and support a skilled trades demand.

      Is that likely to happen? Well, we are beginning, belatedly, to see that college is neither affordable nor mandatory. We're a long way from pushing skilled trades as a career path but we're perhaps taking the first baby steps in that direction.

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  8. I think the Ukrainian war is an interesting example of how this plays out, even though the details are irrelevant to the US. Russia can't build much of anything, but they are doing OK refurbishing their massive junkyards of old Soviet equipment. Ukraine can't much of anything, but can assemble consumer parts into the little FPV drones. So besides making things out of existing parts, we could keep more stockpiles, which you've talked about before with the reserve fleet. And even if we don't start the war with weapons designed for existing parts, there will be an evolution towards that, though we might lose in the meantime and certainly suffer more than necessary!

    An important detail with the chip shortage was that there wasn't so much a shortage of chips, but a shortage of specific kinds of chips. And if even one part is missing then you can't sell a car (or have a working missile). The shortage was all in old chips that it isn't economic to build factories for anymore. For the chips used in ammunition especially, we need to be using the same kind of chips used in phones, etc. and updating them every few years to the latest designs that are being produced the most.

    For platforms that will need much lower volume there are ways to do very expensive chips at low volume faster or use more programmable options like FPGAs. As I've talked about before, we should be really careful where we use software (and chips) in things like ships.

    Then obviously some things like solid rocket motors we should pay extra to have production lines operating at low capacity and keep some inventory to allow time for expansion during a war. Otherwise, as we see again in Ukraine, we will be using slow cruise missiles powered by lawnmower engines.

    A little bit of planning would go a long way!

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    1. “The Russians can’t build much of anything…. refurbishing old junkyards of Soviet equipment…”
      This is not correct - it’s a sort of trope or cliché that seems to have become widely accepted due to having been repeated so frequently. In reality Russia has a very large and highly productive manufacturing base (considerably larger than that of Germany), and during the course of the conflict in Ukraine its MIC has boosted output enormously. Russian policy has always been to keep the manufacture of war matériel firmly under state control, keeping open the huge Soviet arms factories, retaining skilled workers on the payroll through lean times and leaving machine tools idled in case they were ever needed. This has given it the ability to very rapidly surge production levels to meet increased demand -
      something we are almost completely unable to do, except to a limited extent in the case of shell production, where the (single) factory remains under the ‘ownership’ of the Army, although the explosives nowadays need to be sourced overseas.
      Underestimating potential adversaries is something about which we need to be very careful.

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    2. "MIC has boosted output enormously"

      What is your source of data for this?

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    3. I don't doubt the Russians have increased production of artillery shells and other basics. But very little has come in the way of new equipment.

      Germany's GDP is $4.26 trillion even after suffering from being a net energy importer. Manufacturing is ~18% of GDP.

      Russia's GDP is $1.8 trillion with energy exports contributing significantly. Manufacturing is less than 13% of GDP.

      Those numbers suggest Germany's manufacturing industry is 3-4x larger.

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    4. "Germany's GDP"
      "numbers suggest Germany's manufacturing industry is 3-4x larger."

      I like this kind of comment. You've offered comparative data and drawn a conclusion, if somewhat generic and vague.

      Manufacturing covers a broad range and relatively little of it can be directly applied to war needs. For example, manufacturing baby toys doesn't really translate to war materials. Baby toys may be good for the overall economy but it doesn't do anything for war. It would be fascinating to know what the percentage of military related manufacturing is.

      We have data on overall military spending as a percentage of GDP but, again, that doesn't really tell us how much munitions manufacturing is occurring or how much it's increased as a result of the Ukraine war.

      Good comment. Maybe I can encourage you to dig in a bit deeper?

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    5. Unfortunately I don't have the time to go much further, but it would look significantly worse for Russia and better for Germany with the details.

      Germany has a competitive car manufacturing sector, is a world leader in industrial tooling like precision machine tools, and has a large chemical production industry (they invented chemical engineering after all!).

      Russia's manufacturing will have energy-export related things like refining making up a lot of its output and lots of other more basic materials or things like food processing. Only the energy portion is export-oriented and competitive while the rest of manufacturing is more related to the internal consumer market and is often low quality.

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    6. General Randy George - Chief of Staff of the US Army - to the Defence Writers’ Group in Washington DC on February 27th 2024.

      Russia has ‘done very well by pumping money into its industrial base..’ He explained that Russia has significantly expanded its industrial base amid the conflict in Ukraine, and added ‘Don’t underestimate your enemy…that’s never a good place to start’.

      Further; ‘You know - it’s a real bad idea. It’s a mistake to underestimate the Russians. They have incredible industrial capability. They’re not going to stop - it would be really bad to underestimate what the Russian can do.’

      Secretary of the Army Christine Warmuth agreed and stated that Russia has proven itself capable of regenerating its industrial base, and has done so in spite of the sanctions imposed by the West.

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    7. There are two methods that economists use to measure and compare the size of different economies: by Nominal GDP - which you used in your comment - , and by Purchasing Power Parity.
      Russia’s nominal GDP is around $2 trillion and simply measures the size of the Russian economy by converting Russian GDP to $US at market exchange rates.
      As the CIA states; “Market exchange rates are frequently established by a relatively small set of goods and services (the ones the country trades) and may not capture the value of the larger set of goods the country produces … The data derived from the PPP method provide the best available starting point for comparisons of economic strength and well-being between countries.”

      Looking at GDP in PPP terms removes national price level differences and allows a better comparison between countries. For example using PPP ascribes the same value to a ton of Russian steel, as to a ton of US or German steel, so is a far better measure of output.
      This changes the picture completely. Using a PPP comparison the Russian economy ($5.32 trillion) overtook that of Germany ($5.3 trillion) in 2023, and when you eliminate the value of the service economy, and focus only on industrial and manufacturing outputs, which is what counts in wartime, the difference would be larger still.

      There’s obviously a lag on these data, so given that Germany is currently in recession, while the Russian economy expanded by around 3.5% last year the differences are by now significantly greater, and Russia’s economy will likely overtake that of Japan in the course of the next couple of years.

      To help you understand this, ask yourself if it’s sensible to imagine that the Russian economy is the same size as that of Italy? Clearly not, and relying on such a flawed methodological approach has caused the West to seriously underestimate the strength and resilience of the Russian economy and by extension its vulnerability to sanctions.

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    8. I would disagree with the use of PPP here. The main purpose of PPP is to compare living standards, especially differences in non-tradable services. Russian GDP per capita is awful, something like $12,000 a year. But PPP shows us that their living standards aren't as bad as it seems because something like hiring a nanny is so much cheaper than in the US because everyone is so poor and willing to work for very little.

      Something fungible and tradable, like many industrial products, are going to be captured better by regular GDP.

      Do you have any comments on Germany's manufacturing sector being a larger share of its economy and having more relevant industries?

      Overall it isn't really important, right? Because really Russia is up against Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France, UK, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, etc. They should certainly take their enemy in Russia more seriously, but only a tiny portion of their output can match Russia's war time economy. And if they weren't selling Russia chips and machine tools through third country cut outs then Russia would find it very difficult to continue with much of its production.

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    9. "relevant industries"

      This is the key in this context. The 'health' of the overall economy is not the issue. The issue is the degree of military industry or industry that can be quickly coverted to military purpose in the event of war.

      General descriptors of economic health, such as GDP or PPP, are nearly irrelevant as they offer no insight into military production capacity. For example, the US presumably has good GDP/PPP numbers but, as we're seeing in trying to supply Ukraine with weapons and ramp up our production, we're quite limited. I'm not an economist so I have no idea whether a relevant military-industry descriptor exists but GDP and PPP and similar are not it.

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    10. General numbers like GDP or PPP, don't have enough detail to really determine levels of manufacturing....example: Saudi Arabia has a PPP that's a little lower than Taiwan but not too far off. Who do you think has more manufacturing capabilities, especially high tech? Its a no brainer: Taiwan. Saudis just like Russia are a predominantly natural resource exporters, that's how they make most of their money. There is some evidence that they have done a better job at moving production up for SOME weapons like artillery and simple drones, I think the jury is still out for new jet fighters or brand new tanks or electronics...

      Delete
  9. This is a good thing. China has an immense consumer good factory base. If neither side can convert readily, that consumer good advantage they have would not translate into a military advantage.

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  10. China's manufacturing output measured by dollar is more than US plus EU plus Japan. Giving unit good prices are lower, amount of goods manufactured has even bigger share.

    https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/china-worlds-sole-manufacturing-superpower-line-sketch-rise

    Just look how they can make cheap civilian products, it is normal that they can make weapon cheaper than US and allies.

    We say drones are consumable but can we really afford to use them as consumable?

    The nation really needs to rebuild its manufacturing base.

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    1. "Just look how they can make cheap civilian products, it is normal that they can make weapon cheaper than US and allies."

      While theres no doubt that the Chinese can turn out cheap Wal-Mart and Dollar Store garbage like no other place on earth- Weapons and advanced systems CANNOT be churned out like disposable consumer goods using cheap unskilled labor and the cheapest materials. Itd be nice if their weapons were the same quality as their consumer goods, but all the meme material aside, dont hold your breath. If there was a true legitime and factual comparison made, taking into account Chinese govt subsidies or ownership, as well as all the other hidden factors, Id wager that their comparable systems and weapons have a price point within 10% of the US...

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  11. https://news.usni.org/2024/02/23/navy-awards-attack-sub-uss-boise-1-2b-repair-contract-more-than-7-years-late
    So after reading prior threads here about submarine shortfalls and lack of industrial infrastructure to repair and refit subs, this article is interesting about the repair of USS Boise la late model Los Angeles sub. Will the Navy repair & refit more Los Angeles boats ? Now the CNO wants to increase sub production to 2 per year due to to meeting AUKUS..

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  12. The only "quick" way out I see is to lean even harder on our foreign allies. In particular the UK, Italy, Japan, and South Korea. All of them have a proven ability to build ships faster and cheaper than us. Maybe not supercarriers or nuclear subs, but for anything else.

    In the long run, the US government has to make a massive economic shift. Invest in skilled manufacturing, invest in shipyards, convince young people that it's worth devoting their life into learning the ultra-specialized skills of warship construction. But that will probably take at least 30 years to pay off.

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    1. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro visited South Korean Hanwha and HD Hyundai shipyards February "Del Toro courts major shipbuilders to set up shop in US" Breaking Defense - Feb 29


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    2. Unless and until we restore shipbuilding subsidies - there is no way you will restore commercial shipbuilding in the US. It was a fool move by Reagan to unilaterally cut them back in 1980 without any reciprocal deal with Japan Korea, Norway. Of course later equally foolish was GB senior and Bill's push to put China in the WTO. But the end result is the same all the major producers are essentially subsidized one way or the other and if the US wants back in it has to play industrial policy and stable to no funding hanging by continuing resolution threads.

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    3. @ ack-acking

      "All of them have a proven ability to build ships faster and cheaper than us"

      I reasonably sure you can drop the UK out of that. If you want to be like Japan and ROK you need industrial policy, subsidies and frankly companies that think long term and not next quarter. Also something of a social compact and not driven by markets seeped with vulture capitalism. There is a reason the CEO to worker pay ratio in the US nearly 350:1 and in Japan only 50:1.

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    4. "have a proven ability to build ships faster and cheaper than us."

      You need to be very, very careful about this. Other countries have their own problems with shipbuilding. They just don't get publicized. For example, the Norwegian frigate, Helge Ingstad, that sank in 2018 was found to have serious, fatal design and construction flaws that led to the sinking. So ... fast, cheap and a piece of crap.

      The reality is we don't know about the actual quality of what's being built in foreign yards.

      Another reality is that the claimed cheapness is, generally, false. Foreign yards are heavily subsidized both directly and indirectly. Whenever I've looked into a foreign ship cost and factored in the various subsidies, the cost has turned out to be at least ballpark comparable to the US.

      You might bear in mind that the Australian company, Austal, was noted for fast, cheap vessels and they established a plant in the US to build the LCS and promptly produced expensive, poor quality vessels that fell behind production schedules. Clearly, they did not have some magic capability. They turned out to be no different than any other US shipyard.

      We believe that foreign yards are better because we don't hear about their problems or their extensive subsidies.

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    5. "courts major shipbuilders to set up shop in US"

      And once they set up in the US, they'll be subject to the same laws, regulations, and so forth that negatively impact our shipyards. The example of Austal (LCS) should be eye-opening for us.

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    6. "Unless and until we restore shipbuilding subsidies"

      Subsidies are a bandaid and a poor one. It's like the old saying, give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him to fish and he'll eat forever. A subsidy covers up a fundamental problem. We need to address the laws and regulations that are negatively impacting our shipping at all three levels: ownership, construction, and operation. Fix that and we won't need subsidies.

      In theory, I'd be fine with subsides as an INITIAL aid but, as we all know, once established, it's very difficult to remove them and they become a permanent crutch.

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    7. What regulations do have problem with are going send your kid off to work in Chinese ship yard with their piss poor regulation or live near one? Maybe a job mining rare earths there. Yep cheap and a toxic environment surrounding it. I hear unregulated child labor in the Congo produces cobalt at a low price point.

      Subsidies are simple fact of doing business when all the major players do the same just like agriculture.

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  13. I don’t think that the present state of the Royal Navy would give anyone confidence in that country’s ability to build warships, either quickly or competently.

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  14. Hi CNO, I've been a long-time reader and occasionally a poster of poorly -reasoned, half-baked ideas . Sounds like I could be in the navy, huh? I've followed and agreed with your thoughts on virtually everything. I have a question that bothers me. Hope you can offer your thoughts. Given how obvious so much of this seems, why is the navy not buying weapons at an emergency pace? What rationale could possibly explain not buying weapons on a massive scale? I don’t get it.

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    1. "I've been a long-time reader"

      There are so many anonymous readers/commenters. I encourage you to add a username to the end of your comments.

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    2. "occasionally a poster of poorly -reasoned, half-baked ideas ."

      Me too! Only I call it a blog!

      "What rationale could possibly explain"

      Navy leadership is not focused on warfighting. They're focused on their careers and advancement. There's no career enhancement in working to convince Congress to budget for munitions and trying to convince industry to expand their capacity in the face of extremely unsteady demand from Congress and the Navy. That's hard work for almost no recognition and advancement. Advancement comes from producing a shiny new ship or aircraft or from championing some diversity, equity, environmental program.

      It's simple. You do what you'll get rewarded for. No one is being rewarded for increasing the number of missiles built.

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  15. I've mentioned in the past concerns about packing big missiles inside the hull of ships. We are assured these are what LockMart calls "Solid propellant ( Insensitive Munition Propulsion System (IMPS)." They say it won't explode if hit, just burn. These are used in the Army's HIMARS rocket system now in use in Ukraine. See how that works in this short vid:

    https://www.bitchute.com/video/gLnxf7JmaxYE/

    And that's just a pod of six rockets, whereas the US Navy places lots more in a pod.

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  16. "illegals"

    Comment deleted. We're just not going to discuss illegals. Period.

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  17. "Simplify.
    Reclaim Production.
    Skilled Trades.
    Foreign Dependency. "

    Agree totally on all four points. So, how do we get there from here?

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  18. https://www.twz.com/news-features/our-first-look-inside-russias-shahed-136-attack-drone-factory

    Very good article, shows how fast Russia took an Iranian drone, putting it in production and even would appear to start making some enhancements. Now, this isn't "heavy" weapons like a tank or jet fighter so makes me wonder in a US/China conflict, could we duplicate something like this? Somewhat but with serious limitations because we need a bigger drone than that Iranian toy, need a lot more range and payload so we go back to something that requires a lot more production capability than this drone....

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    Replies
    1. The Russkies should build a V1 with better navigation.
      Simpler engine, bigger warhead, faster and the wings were made of concrete something the Russian have plenty of.
      Book on VT fuse and V1, a dual project history.
      https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52785710

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    2. If I remember correctly, one advantage of a pulse jet is it can burn just about anything....I'm surprised though and I didn't get it, I was always under the impression that you couldn't start from ZERO speed with a pulse jet, you need some forward speed to get it to work. Looks like they have someway of getting it to work from a standing start.....

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