Craig Hooper

Me? I'm over in the Bluesky place under @craighooper.bsky.social.

@USAMaritimeX @Austal_USA The T-ATS and the dry dock contracts were….bad or underbid. Even if the OPCs went away and the Navy offered Austal some options for more dry docks under the current contract, I don’t think they’d accept…

@NextNavy @Austal_USA Never hurts to celebrate a launch, pretty typical to have final outfitting happening for awhile after :) 2) Good info, thanks! I would not have guessed Austal was taking losses seeing that they have submarine industrial base and naval auxiliary contracts.

I don’t see this in any headlines, or even @Austal_USA ‘s X account… Well they just launched a new floater. Damn, it’s always good to see a new 🇺🇸-built floating dry dock. Keep ‘em coming!

@mercoglianos @millerrr973 Gosh it’d be nice if the U.S. Navy still maintained a salvage and recovery fleet in the AOR where salvage and recovery may matter, but that’s a story for another day, I guess.

@millerrr973 Is there a recovery plan to tow the craft if it survived splashdown?

I was on the recovery trip for booster 11 and I am actually crashing out that I'm not on this one. 😭😭😭

@DefenseBaron BWI has gotta be loving all this.

Hot take: I love Dulles. ...in that Stockholm Syndrome kinda way. Spent half my life there, we're dating now: - Main terminal iconic. Hands off. - A/B fine. - C/D horrible. - Give us large, modern spaces. Bigger, nicer lounges. - Retire people movers - Faster baggage claim

Huge and good news, if you don't like too much corruption and better quality work! Oh, and it's not Chinese debt...

@NextNavy U.S.shipbuilder housing just became a national story. Craig Hooper's Forbes piece is why. Good article, worth reading. Bill

Good. Vaccines are real, proven and necessary in crowded, advanced civilizations.

@StrongerNavy @HunterStires @johnkonrad “….The Navy intends to pay, via a contract modification, $120 million for the 2,800-space parking deck. That comes out to $42,857 dollars a spot—far more than the median national parking deck construction cost of $29,900 per space…”

@StrongerNavy @HunterStires @johnkonrad Wrote about this boondoggle up in 2024: forbes.com/sites/craighoo…

Massively underrated LinkedIn post. EVERY repair yard in America should get a parking garage.

“Workforce housing and the development of modern, sustainable worker-ready communities is an emerging national priority for every on-the-move political leader in America.”

Few realize that Shipbuilder housing is a stealth issue that will have national implications for 2028 as shipbuilding really gets rolling. Get ready. forbes.com/sites/craighoo…

@johnkonrad I’ll defer to the CO and Navy but she’s limited to operating in winds of under 15 knots. So, please, stop picking on this ship. Advocate for something else—like, maybe, a presidential yacht.

@johnkonrad From 1997, “ she is still a ship with a 200 year old keel, 200 year old floor timbers and 200 year old first futtocks...she’s like one’s great-great grandmother who has undergone hip replacement surgery”

Six million views of a USCG and foreign Navy ships because our admiralty refused to send our active duty warship USS Constitution down from Boston. What a lost opportunity for the US Navy.

The NSA kept 1 lecture in a vault for 40 years. In 2024 they released it. It's Grace Hopper explaining the future of computing in 1982. The channel that posted it: the National Security Agency's own YouTube. Hopper stands at a podium in Navy uniform, a captain, and talks to a room of NSA staff for 90 minutes across 2 reels. The title: "Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People." She compares the computer industry to the early automotive one, all custom parts and no standards, and argues software will become the hard problem, not hardware. She was right by decades. She invented the first compiler and gave COBOL its shape. She kept a clock that ran backwards on her wall to prove rules can be questioned. The tapes were too degraded for normal release, so the agency restored them before posting. 40 years in an NSA archive. 90 minutes. Now free.

I’m not joking, but the influence wielded by Russia’s quasi-state fleet of oligarch-owned superyachts has long gone unrecognized. This really crimps Moscow’s future, imo.

Navy’s Pacific Achilles’ Heel - shipyards The biggest military threat to the US is China, which should war come would be a conflict fought across the Pacific. As such, priority needs be to establishing naval repair and maintenance facilities there. Today there is inadequate dry dock capacity, too few shipyards for maintenance nor ship construction (drone ships would be an easy first step for new shipbuilding) on the West Coast. See the latest article/reporting on this here: forbes.com/sites/craighoo…

Danish artist's wooden troll sculpture brings whimsy to RAGBRAI desmoinesregister.com/story/life/liv…

Looked at the 50% tariff list and am now resigned that my pool rebuild isn’t gonna happen this year. Cement costs a lot!

Historically, the West Coast waterfront has beaten the East Coast and Gulf Coast on price and schedule. But Washington’s bias against the west has gone on for so long, the West Coast has ingested it and believes it. This has to change. forbes.com/sites/craighoo…