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SlothmanAllen

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Anduril plans to build a $1.5 billion factory that will be over 5 million square feet and designed to produce, "tens of thousands of autonomous weapon systems". The funding for the factory comes from a recent Series F investment round. Anduril is calling it an "Arsenal factory" (Arsenal 1) which it believes is needed to address the shortcomings in scalability in traditional defense manufacturing exposed by the war in Ukraine.

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“In a major conflict, use of weapons and munitions would quickly exceed supply,” Anduril continues, predicting that the United States would run out of weapons “in the first few weeks” of a peer-state war.
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“We’re taking many of the people who lead those processes at some of these world-leading commercial companies that have achieved this type of hyperscale production before and we’re bringing this into the defense industrial base to fundamentally transform how we build weapons, how we design weapons,” Chris Brose, Anduril’s chief strategy officer, said.
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RobertC

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SWO veteran proposes lesson-learned from China
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(Type 22 rationale and design reprised)
In the meantime, the U.S. Navy must make up for its inadequate existing resources to cover its current obligations. A partial response to its arsenal deficiencies might be to introduce a substantial number of small, guided missile boats to the fleet. These boats could build rapidly as offensive weapons platforms able to provide ship-killing lethality in time of war and serve as a visible deterrent presence in coastal areas in periods without active hostilities. Their mission would be training for war and showing the flag. ... These missile boats would have a focused anti-enemy ship, anti-enemy boat mission.
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The optimal missile boats would be around one hundred feet in length [Type 22 is 140 feet] and have crews of fewer than ten people [Type 22 is 12]. These small boats are inexpensive to build or buy and to operate. Small crews would minimize the strain on the U.S. Navy’s personnel levels while providing a visible deterrence presence.

Small missile boats can free up larger vessels for missions requiring their unique capabilities. These smaller boats, armed with advanced guided missile systems [Type 22 is eight YJ-83 and LOS datalink] can punch well above their size.

Moving promptly to obtain small missile boats for the U.S. Navy will give it time to increase the size of the major combatant fleet. It would also enhance the existing fleet’s ability to deter potential adversaries from miscalculating the U.S. resolve to maintain freedom of the seas in both the short and long term. Operating these small boats as integral elements of the U.S. Navy would supply a sorely needed force multiplier.
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However as the navalists at Cdr Salamander keep moaning
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the USN is struggling to build its new frigate from an existing design base. Suggested linking from his article

Meanwhile its sibling service the USCG is having a sad because
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U.S. Coast Guard presence in the Arctic has taken another hit. Icebreaker Healy suffered an engineering compartment fire at the end of July during its annual summer Arctic patrol. It is now returning from its aborted patrol on a single engine in an effort to attempt repairs.

The fire reportedly damaged a starboard transformer as a result of which the starboard engine remains inoperable. [Just four years prior, in August 2020,
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damaging the starboard propulsion motor and shaft, also ending its summer Arctic patrol.]

The Coast Guard’s other icebreaker, the 50-year old Polar Star, is not available during summer as it is undergoing a service life extension program at the Mare Island Dry Dock in California.
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And the USCG has fallen victim to the USN disease
The Coast Guard’s attempts to rejuvenate and expand its icebreaker capabilities continue to face ongoing delays. Little progress has been made on a [original fixed-price incentive design and build] contract with Halter Marine, now Bollinger Shipyards, signed in 2019, for three Polar Security Cutters.
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.
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Awarding FPIF new-design contracts and then shifting builders post-award is a sure-fire method for increasing costs while extending schedules. And this contract is no exception.
 
M

Michaelsinodef

Senior Member
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RobertC said:
SWO veteran proposes lesson-learned from China
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(Type 22 rationale and design reprised)

However as the navalists at Cdr Salamander keep moaning
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the USN is struggling to build its new frigate from an existing design base. Suggested linking from his article

Meanwhile its sibling service the USCG is having a sad because
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And the USCG has fallen victim to the USN disease

Awarding FPIF new-design contracts and then shifting builders post-award is a sure-fire method for increasing costs while extending schedules. And this contract is no exception.
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TLDR: US manufacturing has fallen/rotted so much so, that they are struggling to build actual new ships (only really able to churn out older designs at lol costs).
 
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SlothmanAllen

Junior Member
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RobertC said:
SWO veteran proposes lesson-learned from China
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(Type 22 rationale and design reprised)

However as the navalists at Cdr Salamander keep moaning
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
the USN is struggling to build its new frigate from an existing design base. Suggested linking from his article

Meanwhile its sibling service the USCG is having a sad because
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And the USCG has fallen victim to the USN disease

Awarding FPIF new-design contracts and then shifting builders post-award is a sure-fire method for increasing costs while extending schedules. And this contract is no exception.
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Further to the listed above woes.

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Navy shipbuilding is currently in “a terrible state” — the worst in a quarter century, says Eric Labs, a longtime naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office.

“I feel alarmed,” he said. “I don’t see a fast, easy way to get out of this problem. It’s taken us a long time to get into it.”
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Where have all the workers gone?​

One of the industry’s chief problems is the struggle to hire and retain laborers for the challenging work of building new ships as graying veterans retire, taking decades of experience with them.
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Hiring and retaining workers seems like a big problem for them in general and while they try to paint shipbuilding as a "good" job I think it really struggles to be worthwhile career in Western nations. I took a two year community college program in IT and got a job locally in IT with a pension. I work remotely 100% Monday to Friday from 8:30 to 5:30 and have a decently salary. I feel like there are a lot of good alternatives out to that type of manual labour which makes it hard to justify as a career choice. Even less pay can be balanced by better work life balance.
 
O

Overbom

Brigadier
Registered Member
SlothmanAllen said:
Further to the listed above woes.

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Hiring and retaining workers seems like a big problem for them in general and while they try to paint shipbuilding as a "good" job I think it really struggles to be worthwhile career in Western nations. I took a two year community college program in IT and got a job locally in IT with a pension. I work remotely 100% Monday to Friday from 8:30 to 5:30 and have a decently salary. I feel like there are a lot of good alternatives out to that type of manual labour which makes it hard to justify as a career choice. Even less pay can be balanced by better work life balance.
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the quickest solution would be to turn to Japan and S.Korea to build their naval ships. yes, it's a humiliation, but sometimes you gotta sacrifice your dignity..
 
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supersnoop

Major
Registered Member
SlothmanAllen said:
Further to the listed above woes.

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Hiring and retaining workers seems like a big problem for them in general and while they try to paint shipbuilding as a "good" job I think it really struggles to be worthwhile career in Western nations. I took a two year community college program in IT and got a job locally in IT with a pension. I work remotely 100% Monday to Friday from 8:30 to 5:30 and have a decently salary. I feel like there are a lot of good alternatives out to that type of manual labour which makes it hard to justify as a career choice. Even less pay can be balanced by better work life balance.
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It isn't just difficulty of work. It is also the nature of these multi billion dollar projects that are created an cancelled at the whim of a politician's pen.

Zumwalt was planned for 32 units, now cancelled after 2.
LCS was planned for dozens, barely a dozen were built and now considered fully scrap.

This kind of uncertainty flows downward, with no production in the pipeline, do you expect them to be patriotically unemployed waiting for the next project?

Once they are gone (and we can assume the are gone because they found a good more steady job) then they are probably gone for good.
 
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