Nice article, but the shipbuilding capacity numbers you mention seem completely wrong. China builds roughly 50% of ships, South Korea 30% and Japan 20%. Everyone else has <5% combined with the US being essentially 0%. These are production numbers and not capacity, but it's clearly incongruent. That's also why everyone has to constantly lie, because fixing the USN essentially requires to make US shipbuilding globally competitive. Since that's impossible in the next 20 years at least everyone has to ignore the obvious.
Those numbers have roughly been constant since ca. 2015, although China is moving up the value chain to higher value ships (LNG/LPG carriers, cruise ships, ice breakers) it's share stayed the same.
very interesting, thanks for sending. It seems those other numbers are used in a lot of places, especially some right win sources. Good to know it makes the story basically even worse for the U.S.
Funny thing is the Russian overproduction of manufacturing capacity, which was then mothballed, has now serviced them very well in the SMO. They were able to up shell production rapidly by bringing mothballed production equipment into service, while also being able to maintain and expand civilian production to replace goods no longer available from the West. This was in part the theory of allowing the building of over capacity.
If the SMO had started 10 years from now, then it's likely that Russia may have had a severe shortage of skilled workers, but fortunately for Russia they did have a cadre of older men to bring back online and train up their well educated younger workers (another over capacity). The USA stripping of industrial skills has gone on for at least 20 years more, and the destruction of public education even longer.
Nice article, but the shipbuilding capacity numbers you mention seem completely wrong. China builds roughly 50% of ships, South Korea 30% and Japan 20%. Everyone else has <5% combined with the US being essentially 0%. These are production numbers and not capacity, but it's clearly incongruent. That's also why everyone has to constantly lie, because fixing the USN essentially requires to make US shipbuilding globally competitive. Since that's impossible in the next 20 years at least everyone has to ignore the obvious.
interesting, I’ve seen that number everywhere. Do you have another source?
For example here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-dominate-global-shipbuilding/ or here https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2014/08/09/tilted-marine for a long term view.
Those numbers have roughly been constant since ca. 2015, although China is moving up the value chain to higher value ships (LNG/LPG carriers, cruise ships, ice breakers) it's share stayed the same.
very interesting, thanks for sending. It seems those other numbers are used in a lot of places, especially some right win sources. Good to know it makes the story basically even worse for the U.S.
Funny thing is the Russian overproduction of manufacturing capacity, which was then mothballed, has now serviced them very well in the SMO. They were able to up shell production rapidly by bringing mothballed production equipment into service, while also being able to maintain and expand civilian production to replace goods no longer available from the West. This was in part the theory of allowing the building of over capacity.
If the SMO had started 10 years from now, then it's likely that Russia may have had a severe shortage of skilled workers, but fortunately for Russia they did have a cadre of older men to bring back online and train up their well educated younger workers (another over capacity). The USA stripping of industrial skills has gone on for at least 20 years more, and the destruction of public education even longer.