J. "McDougall"

Let’s talk the US Navy Ghost Fleet: Part 2 In this segment we will talk about what it would take to reactivate the retired Amphibious fleet for the US Marine Corps. I will give the pros, cons, cost, and finally a grade from F (better off scrapped) to A (reactivate today). We will start with the USN side of the house and then move to MARAD. #LHD #LHA #LSD #usmarines #USNavy #ships #ghostfleet

Ukraine is really getting stiff armed by everyone.

@StrategicTrends Military is always hiring 🫡

If someone could hire me that'd be great

@WeaponScientist To be fair they’re just starting to behave like the average government contractor. It will get worse from here.

Incredible

An upcoming comprehensive refit to install a battery of hypersonic missiles on the Zumwalt guided-missile destroyers will also increase the stealth warship’s operational range and endurance, according to recently released documents 🇺🇸 By @AaronMatthew_L navalnews.com/naval-news/202…

Deserved. The new electric car is hideous.

AI created Chinese manufactured peptides are going to become a thing aren’t they?

I don't know about that as people still aggressively dunk on the Cybertruck.

Laid down in 2017... delivery at best in 2027... In the same timespan other shipyards have laid down, delivered and (!) commissioned: 🇯🇵 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries: 12 frigates 🇮🇹 Fincantieri: 10 frigates 🇫🇷 Naval Group: 8 frigates

Compute Constraints

Since Mistral pretty much just distills off Deepseek, albeit very poorly, we might see this start appearing in there models as well. 🫠

@BBG17_JDSSURUGA Abrams, Bradley, and Burke forever.

アーレイ・バーク級、結構冗談抜きで2040年代になっても建造が続いてそうだなと

It should be noted that the former PM tendered the original Attack Submarine contract with Naval group and thus had a personal and reputational stake in the program. It was cancelled in favor of AUKUS for a number of important reasons: 1. The government came to the conclusion that conventional submarines weren't a good fit for the evolving strategic picture and the RANs need to project power further and longer which could only be done with nuclear. 2. The original A$50 billion contract had ballooned to over A$90 billion without a single hull having started construction. The first Attack class sub wasn't scheduled for delivery and IOC until 2035 which would come after most of the Collins class submarines reached there end of life. 3. Naval Group got into several public disputes with there Australian counterparts as they struggled to hit the 60% Australian content threshold as stipulated in the "maximize Australian Industry content" portion of the contract. This isn't to say that AUKUS doesn't suffer from similar issues as the US submarine Industrial base struggles to hit 1.8 Virginia SSN hulls as year let alone the 2.33 hulls a year target for 2032. While I think the political cost of not handing over the promised second hand 3x Virginia class hulls will likely ensure an on time handover its highly doubtful that newer Block V, VI, or VII Virginia will be handed over as part of the full 5 hull acquisition.

The @USCG’s newest #icebreaker has completed its first late winter patrol in the Bering Sea and #Arctic, marking a significant milestone in Washington’s push to rebuild year-round polar capabilities amid growing strategic competition in the Arctic. en.highnorthnews.com/politics/coast…

[VIDEO] @Navantia_UK unveils LASV75 autonomous vessel design 🇬🇧 Designed in the UK, Navantia proposes the LASV75 as a key component of the hybrid navy – which combines traditional crewed warships with crewless escorts and autonomous technologies such as drones. youtube.com/watch?v=EV_XZf…

Beginning to realize that no one in the anglosphere seems to know how to acquire, upgrade, or manage a shipbuilding program.

@Schizointel We must aspire to returning to pigeon in the loop. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_P…

Wait till there's a semiconductor shortage then they will add Human-in-the-Loop Manual Control Mechanism

Roughy equivalent displacement of FFx and infinitely more capable.

Since they’re going to be using the dry dock normally assigned for CVN construction the BBGN is a real threat to future procurement. The lack of graving docks and additional facilities has already resulted in delays for Enterprise and Doris Miller as JFKs own delivery got continuously delayed. In part, the effort to keep BBGx conventional was to prevent this from happening. I don’t know why we are putting additional burden on an already oversubscribed yard.

More yards only makes sense if there’s labor looking to meet the demand for the jobs. As much as the conversation around trades has improved since even when I graduated high school it hasn’t necessarily resulted in a rising supply of trade workers. Both Austal and FMM still suffer from labor shortages and are the youngest of the US shipyards. Rome was not built in a day but asking our over taxed yards to handle additional load they can’t support doesn’t make sense. Every delay and cost overrun is just another reason for increased scrutiny and less willingness for Congress to spend even more money. The sooner we embrace the Finland Model for shipbuilding and acquisition the sooner we can get hulls in the water.

The U.S. government still hasn’t figured out that it needs more shipyards. We put some money into existing shipyards, but is a fraction of what we put into ship construction contracts. We need to try the GOCO model. The government pays for shipyard capital and hires a company to run it. Because no sane company is going to pay to build a good shipyard for Navy contracts when we there is high risk that the contracts will get chopped or cancelled.

The US government has been dumping money into US yards for almost a decade with anemic improvements in hulls produced per year. While such gains are long term investments US yards can’t meet the demand. We should look to our Japanese and Korean allies to close the gap.