Free Republic

Our own commercial shipbuilding industry has a lot of catching up to do. We should pass the SHIPS for America Act to support it as soon as possible. Last month an eye-popping headline came out of the Chinese shipping and logistics industry: Cosco, a state-owned shipping conglomerate based in Shanghai, had struck a deal with another state-owned firm – China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) – for 87 new vessels across all segments of its fleet. Maritime Executive said the order includes “ultra-large container ships, ultra-large bulk carriers, ultra-large oil tankers, grain transport ships, multi-purpose heavy lift vessels, MR tankers, ro-ro...

The easiest way to misunderstand the Navy’s shipbuilding mess is to treat it as a shipyard story. That is how the issue is usually framed. Too few workers, too much complexity, too much bureaucracy, too many delays. None of that is wrong, but it is only the visible part of the problem. The deeper problem sits upstream. The Navy’s procurement troubles reflect not just industrial strain, but a long stretch of strategic drift. If Washington cannot decide what kind of fleet it wants, shipbuilders will never deliver it on time... For most of the Cold War, the Navy knew what...

In April, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance. It aims to address the nation’s dependence on foreign manufacturers of commercial and military ships. To make this possible, we are going to have to restore conditions and levels of investment that haven’t been seen since the 1970s. That was the last time the U.S. had anything approaching global maritime dominance. The U.S. needs warships as well as containerships and bulk ships, and it needs them pronto. We don’t have the workforce required to mount the kind of resurgence the government is looking for, and costs are...

The United States has burned through thousands of missiles since the Iran war began on Feb. 28, diminishing the armaments needed in a potential future conflict with China tied to its tensions with Taiwan.The U.S. military has used 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles — nearly all of the total number left in Washington’s stockpile — and fired off more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, The New York Times reported. The U.S. only produces roughly 100 Tomahawks a year, meaning under current production, it could take 10 years to replace.In addition, in less than eight weeks American forces have spent more...

In 2019, The Economist examined China’s potential to become a scientific superpower. Today, it is clear that China has achieved this status. Chinese scientists have gained prominence in high-quality science measures, surpassing both the United States and the European Union in producing high-impact papers,,. China leads the world in physical sciences, chemistry, and Earth and environmental sciences. It dominates publications on advanced technologies such as perovskite solar panels and hydrogen extraction from seawater. China also excels in quantum computing, with research teams achieving significant breakthroughs, such as setting a record for the number of entangled quantum bits... China’s patent production...

The Biden administration is poised to start contracts with private firms to surveil service member's social media accounts to find those with views they deem “concerning.” According to The Intercept: An extremism steering committee led by Bishop Garrison, a senior adviser to the secretary of defense, is currently designing the social media screening pilot program, which will “continuously” monitor military personnel for “concerning behaviors,” according to a Pentagon briefing in late March.