A pretty inclusive list of all the ship building plan/SIOP shortfalls.
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Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
Saw this interesting twitter post this morning:
The author is a worthwhile follow.
The author is a worthwhile follow.
Also doesn’t include the closure a whole bunch of public shipyards, like Brooklyn and Long Beach Navy Yards.
The issue isn’t necessarily the consolidation of ownership itself as the simple lack of industrial capacity both at the yards we have and the number of them nationally
That’s usually used to highlight the impacts of “the Last Supper” - that lines in this graphic as well.
Interesting is one word. Alarming is the one I’d use.
Can you explain? Not sure I'm familiar with "the Last Supper" in this context.
Here you go:
'The last supper': How a 1993 Pentagon dinner reshaped the defense industry
Thirty years ago, a secret dinner at the Pentagon led to a flurry of consolidation in the defense industry. We hear the story of that so-called "last supper" and what it means for the Pentagon's $800 billion budget today.
@Randy Daytona thanks - looking forward to that read. That graphic is pretty stunning.
Yeah…I feel rather conflicted about where we are with it all today.
On one hand, there can be advantages to large consolidated companies. On the other hand, the major defense primes are hardly the equivalent of either the massive Japanese/Korean industrial conglomerates or closer to home, our massive tech companies in terms of capability.
Another issue is that theoretically, they should be leveraging their commercial industrial side too (and vice versa) to really make kick ass stuff on both sides. In reality, it’s questionable how well that has been working, and there are definitely negative impacts to them being publicly traded companies. In theory, they should be investing in themselves to develop new technologies and capabilities to compete against each other. Instead, because competition is so limited, and they all do the same thing, they just do stock buybacks with profits to crank up shareholder returns.
The really, truly major thing I think we lost? By farming all this out to massive defense companies we also stripped down govt. capabilities. The govt simply lacks enough in house expertise to provide adequate technical direction and oversight of what we ask industry to do IMO, which is also what we need in order to actually force them to compete against each other.
This is a fun and valid rabbit hole to go down. I’ll not bore folks here but for those who are intrigued by finance nerdery, google the stock buyback phenomenon. IIRC even folks like Buffett are advocates for the practice, but in a lot of situations when you have executive compensation tied to stock performance, tricky stuff.
On the one hand, especially for dividend paying stocks, retiring shares improves some metrics like earnings per share and actively reduces the cash obligations for dividends to be paid. On the other, one could argue that share repurchases are for companies that don’t have a vision for how to reinvest in their own future, that it’s an easy way out for short term gratification. Anyhow, interesting stuff.
This would be a good start:
news.usni.org
Congressional Commission Calls for Third Nuclear Shipyard to Bolster U.S. Strategic Forces - USNI News
The Pentagon needs a third shipyard that can build nuclear-powered ships so the U.S. can keep pace with China and Russia’s nuclear modernization, a congressional commission said in a new report published Thursday. A third private shipyard would expand industry’s capacity to build nuclear-powered...
news.usni.org
Pretty long term investment. Once the bill comes, the support will drop.This would be a good start:
Congressional Commission Calls for Third Nuclear Shipyard to Bolster U.S. Strategic Forces - USNI News
The Pentagon needs a third shipyard that can build nuclear-powered ships so the U.S. can keep pace with China and Russia’s nuclear modernization, a congressional commission said in a new report published Thursday. A third private shipyard would expand industry’s capacity to build nuclear-powered...
Sad, but true.
Nobody wants to pay for all the non-sexy shit we need to sustain ourselves. Our installations are crumbling after 20+ years of stiff arming the inevitable, and now we’re all shocked that our Sailors are living in mold infested barracks. Getting well is going to hurt.
Also let's shut down the govt again and furlough all the civilians from depot level maintenance, and fuck up aircraft readiness more than it is now. It's so shortsighted and self-defeating.