[Reverend Wright]

US shipyard capacity is now a joke, just like every other part of USA industrial capacity.

NeoCon free trade outsourcing has its consequences.

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/1/11/lack-of-shipyard-capacity-putting-unsustainable-strain-on-navy

[buwaya]

US shipyard capacity is more than sufficient to build steel sufficient to need. That is NOT the critical path problem in building out the Navy. The big deals are:

a.) Tech system development. What are you going to put in these hulls? Every aerospace and electronics contractor is going all out right now.

b.) Operating costs. Personnel take up the bulk of every budget. Who is going to man those hulls? Worse, who is going to maintain them, and all their tech?

c.) Procurement inefficiency.

Conversely, the US and its Euro/Asian allies have an enormous aerospace production capacity, dwarfing both Russia and China by an order of magnitude, or more. Consider the civil aircraft business, just for starters. The US alone is building 150+ F-35’s annually (as of 2022), which on its own is 5x Russias rate of production of front line aircraft.