Posted on 09/17/2023 11:04:02 PM PDT by Reverend Wright
PASCAGOULA, Miss.—A $13.3 billion program to safeguard American interests in the Arctic has run aground on an old industrial challenge: cutting and shaping thick, hardened steel.
U.S. officials are racing to procure new polar icebreakers because one of only two that the Coast Guard now sails has reached the end of its life, and the one assigned to the Arctic is out of service for maintenance every winter. Delivery of the first new icebreaker has slipped to 2028 from 2024 as designers, engineers and welders grapple with something the U.S. hasn’t done in decades: reliably shape hardened steel that is more than an inch thick into a curved, reinforced ship’s hull.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
The Russians have nuclear-powered icebreakers. I saw numbers of them in Finland and St. Petersburg.
We have the expertise and potential capability.
“By comparison, Russia has three dozen national icebreakers suitable for the Arctic, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, and China has four, including two icebreaking research ships that regularly appear at high latitudes. U.S. officials suspect those have strategic purposes.”
Russia launched two more in 2022. You know, when sanctions had crushed them and they couldn’t produce anything.
Why is the same regime that tells us all the ice will melt due to climate change building new icebreakers? (Companion question to why did Bathhouse Barry buy oceanfront property.)
Why would we need ice breakers when there is no ice because of global warming.... Oh wait. Maybe it will be electric.
meanwhile, The Russians have nuclear powered ice breakers ro keep their shipping lanes clear. Chomo Joe wouldnt make a new ice breaker unless turd world invaders were coming in from the Yukon.
I’m wondering why the one remaining functional icebreaker is laid up every winter for maintenance.
Isn’t winter when you need these things ?
Bethlehem Steel in Buffalo, NY used to be a steel processing company capable of high levels of production and distribution. at one point, they were the 4th largest steel mill in the world. Had over 20K workers. They were on the stock exchange.
Three main factors led to the demise of Bethlehem Steel:
#1. A poorly managed pension fund.
#2. Union rules that made modernization very difficult.
#3. Competition from cheap foreign steel companies.
Well, Bethlehem Steel had multiple locations.
Burns Harbor was the last integrated steel mill built in the USA, and the cost of it was a very significant financial burden on Bethlehem.
When continuous casting came in, it boosted productivity a lot and created a lot of additional supply. That led to lower prices and the high cost producers got killed.
I believe that Burns Harbor did not have continuous casters when it opened - as a cost saving measure.
Zactly
Plenty of young men looking for honest sweat labor.
Would likely be along the way if the Rats hadn’t stole the 2020 POTUS election.
#ing Rats
Had many romantic excursions to festivals in Bethlehem, PA decades ago. At least one of the stacks was still lit at the time. Upon returning home late at night, my fiancé patiently gave me the space to appreciate the distant glow.
From Ross Perot’s warning forward, the US under its enlightened leadership has outsourced those strengths it requires to actually be strong. Posturing and PR are no substitute for middle-class, blue collar productivity and individual human ingenuity. In the last decades our political class has thought they could off-shore and then simply order prosperity like an Amazon doorstep delivery. What a surprise. Supply chains break. And politically-charged sanctions break them further. The solutions are obvious. But the opposition to them great, “progressive” and ideological.
Probably not. The huge machines that could do this were primarily built to form armor plates for battleships. Believe it or not they bent 18" armor plate steel cold. We haven't built any such ships since WW2. The machinery in Pittsburgh was scrapped in the 1970s. I saw it then, long enough ago that I've forgotten the name of the company.
It would be really tough.
A place to start would be steel. The USA would need at least three integrated steel mills to replace current imports. (you don’t just want recycling mills because in the event of war, the supply of scrap steel dries up, as people don’t scrap things if civilian production has been ended).
No private company in the world has built an integrated mill on its own dime since Bethlehem built Burns Harbor in the 1960’s.
The subsidies required to do that would be on the order of the subsidies for EV battery plants.
But what you get is a real solution to a national security vulnerability. VS a fake solution for cars no-one wants to cure a fake problems that doesn’t even exist.
The opposition would be overwhelming to steel mill subsidies. I don’t think it would be possible under the current Regime.
3D printer should work
Unless the steel mills are in Florida near The Villages, probably not.
Nano technology and AI.
“We have the expertise and potential capability.
Unless the steel mills are in Florida near The Villages, probably not.”
LOL !
this stuff gets forgotten pretty quickly.
When the Iowa turret blew up (1989) the Navy was initially going to repair it.
but they found that no-one knew how to weld steel armor that thick, since it hadn’t been done since 1945.
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