Yes, we have not yet contracted with foreign yards for Carrier or Submarine construction, but can we/do we still build commercial vessels?
We were able to build enough ships in WWII, to stay ahead of the U Boats, but today?
Fincanteri, in Italy, Hyundai in Korea, yards in Japan and China. Looks like they build most of the ship now.

yes,

travel to south Louisiana.

Bollinger and Chouest turn out quite a few

Most of the shipyards and dry-docks have been sold off for development of marinas and expansion of cargo ports. Any serious effort to build ships would have to take back what has been sold off, and with most under foreign investment its not likely!

Phil

looks like America produces about 3% of the tonnage, compared to the rest of the world. Even Poland builds more. Italy makes almost twice the tonnage.
Big boys are S Korea, Japan, China.

We build the important ships - Carriers, cruisers, destroyers, subs..

but not the bottoms that would allow us to resupply NATO in case of a dust up with Russia.
We will lose any war where we can't project material into the conflict.

For my last year and a half of employ I was resident at Samsung Heavy Industries yard in Goeje South Korea. The yard employed 30,000 crafts and spit out six to eight ships a month. Throw in nearby Daewoo in Okpo, which is where I lived, that is larger and Hyundai north along the coast (larger yet) and, yes the Korean's rule the shipping industry. Building ships is a piece of what they do as a pile of O&G work is done as well. It must be seen to really gather the scale of what they do.

In order to lose those ships the enemy would have to better our navy; do you think Russia can do that?

I can think of 2 shipyards within an hour of me that can build commercial vessels at a good rate - if pushed.

WI used to build A LOT of ships and could again. Not all of the old timers are dead...

They could not compete with the Korean's hence they don't, plain and simple.

i would love to do that type of work, welding preferably.

due to wages?

unions?

how strict are Koreans on safety? do they turn a 30 min job into 3hrs of paperwork?


just wondering......

Question wasn't if we could compete but if we could build given necessity.

Currently they're building LCS, icebreakers, buoy tenders, ferries, OSVs, etc. If necessary as Sam asked, they could build the commercial vessels needed during a time of war.

If we can buy the steel from a foreign country, and if we can find the skilled labor, and if we can get the permits, then yes, we can build ships

yes,

San Diego:

http://www.nassco.com/products-and-services/comm-design-construction.html

Portland OR:

http://vigor.net/projects/shipbuilding


There's a number more out there too.

Might take a while to ramp up production, and maybe not to WWII levels, but we can stillbuild boats, commercial and military here.

Geno

I'd imagine a combination of labor cost, productivity, and government red tape.

They build some in Marinette Wi.

Resupply what?
After the buttons are pushed there won't be anything left to supply. You still brain washed into thinking a conventional war between 2 major players will happen? that's so 1960's.

Any dust up would start conventional, through proxies, and would not go nuclear unless one side faced a significant threat to their heart land.

Now add productivity into it and they absolutely win. I have worked all over the world and the least productive have been, in order of good to bad, the US, Canada and Australia. The latter absolutely winning, or losing, hands down.

Here's a bit on Samsung's yard.

http://www.samsungshi.com/Eng/Pr/shipyard01.aspx

thanks for the reply, kinda what I was thinking.


Never been involved with ships, but with drilling rigs. Mescans are common place in shipyards (that do repair / refurb) over here now.

not sure how much the pay gap is with them compared to americans.

Geno, Vigor is having a hell of a time with QC. They fail a lot of X-rays. The shipyard I work at puts out better product, but the workforce is not what it used to be. The younger generation don't know or want to know what hard work is. The "entitled" are hard to train and whine a lot. Nothing like my grandfathers generation or even my dad's.... Granddad started out in St. Louis and dad was a Navy Sea Bee.... Back then, you had a problem with a flunky, you took them out back.... . Bunch of fu cking pansies now days though.

One builds barges, ferry's and work boats, General Dynamics/Nassco has 3 shipyards San Diego, Norfolk, and Jacksonville and is the only full service shipyard on the West Coast... the company has built 53 ships in 55 years amongst their 3 yards. While that might be a fantastic record, its a far cry from what we once had.

Found this 2001 report on U.S. capabilities, page 10 shows the number of ways and maximum ship length capability. Long but interesting.

Link


Phil

A young apprentice Korean welder aspires to be great. From start of day to break to lunch to break to end of day (12 hours usually) the hood is down the majority of the time. Hence why I wrote what I did. They just get with it...

Fantastic record? It took those yards 55 years to make what the smaller Korean yard does in 9 months.

The whole premise of the capacity to build trans oceanic vessels to "Win" some sorta' hypothetical "War" falls really flat , in my view.

Sorry, Sam,....

No building Liberty or Victory ships , this time around.

Anybody up to speed on what the letters MSTS actually MEAN, and how many vessels are reserved for (Lord Forbid) the MSTS mission going front and center ?

GTC

Well Electric Boat in New London, CT makes submarines, and no they are not building like they did in the World War II Era or the 1950- 1960's either, then their is the Bath Yard in Maine! Then again there is never going to be an all out conflict like World War II either- Nor is there ever going to be a shooting war with the Russians either its just not going to happen, we and the Russians will be fighting this low level junk with stateless persons! And even if we did go for a full scale War with all that goes along with it, it will last but a few days or weeks, not the years the First or Second World Wars lasted- the weapons are to accurate and they go were we tell them to go and hit for the most part what we want to hit! So unless you have it already in the inventory, you are not going to have the time to built stuff to replace the losses the war would be over long before you could even begin the task of building the stuff!

A while back I was reading an article on the new Panama Canal which mentioned the new ships in the planing stages currently at close to 14,000 units but with a couple close to 1,300 feet and 17,000 units, don't think we even have that capability.

Monsters...


Phil

Why would someone want to build ships or go into a high cost materially and labor intensive business when a person can make more marketing computer games for teens?

Phil

That's the elephant in the room.

I was wrong on the size of the new container ships. The new one's won't even be able to dock in the U.S. and there are some already built and in service in England of a new Oscar class which are 1,300 feet in length and carrying nearly 19,300 TEU's;

Link

and some are saying a company in China is planing on building ships with a 24,000 TEU capacity.


Phil

In the event of a major conflict - shipbuilding would come to a standstill due to unavailability of steel. Much the same problem that caused the South to lose "the war of Northern agression"
To build a house - you must have 2X4's

The completely STUPID, and fantasy based sea level ditch, or the one in Nicaragua, Phill ?

When you return from cloud 9, suggest you get yourself up to speed on what's actually up down that way.

Link: http://www.seanews.com.tr/news/1531...strict-Panama-transits-to-12-metres.html

I would suggest you your self wake up or at least read what has been posted fool!

Phil

I hate to agree with you, but you are right. It is amazing what those guys can get done.....

Yeah, it was a sad day when we had to stop the blanket parties!

I didn't know about the Vigor issues, just know of them from the tug guys and the trade mags on the boats.
NASSCO I know of as my dad and friends worked in the shipbuilding industry in San Diego, my dad at SD Marine for a number of years. Friends there, NASSCO and others. One of my best friends from HS still works down there too.

You may be right about the youngsters, however we have some older guys who have had to be talked to about not accomplishing much during a workday and some young ones I'd work with any day.

Geno

Guys, I was just answering the OP's question, not making a statement as to how great the US shipbuilding capabilities are, or commenting on the quality of the build, or if it was cost efficient, or could we resupply the armed forces, or addressing whether we need to or not.

From the OP's first post:

"but can we/do we still build commercial vessels?"

you've seen my reply regarding two yards that still exist and can still build commercial vessels. I posted links that show that they are still doing so fairly recently. ( I see that new Tidewater tug occasionally from my place)

And Greyghost's post seems to back me up, no? (see red text for clarification, those are commercial vessels if I'm not mistaken. Not many folks taking them out bass fishing. )

There are others, so I guess the answer to the question posted right there in the subject of the thread is...yes.

Geno

PS, give me a break, after all I'm just a dysfunctional squirrel who likes Cowboy hats, and other stuff..... on scantily clad women.

Ship building is alive and well on the northern gulf coast.

Chouest was spitting out supply boats like mad not to long ago.

Ingalls, Atlantic and Halter Marine in south Mississippi have a steady back log and are always hiring.

Austal USA in Mobile, AL is currently under DOD contract, building LCS for the Navy, as well as other projects. They are always hiring as well.

Geno, you think you are dysfunctional? The people I used to work for wanted to try their hands at building barges. I was all for it until they wanted to start omitting transverse frames, IE: skip every other frame. They used to push some of the barges down the river for you guys (fish runs). They overloaded a gravel barge and it folded in half. That was a 6 million dollar mistake. Needless to say, I said screw you guys and went back to Portland.....There's definitely places to build big commercial vessels in the states, the hard thing would be training the workforce to build these monstrosities.....and I remember my grandpa telling me he could train any monkey to weld... ... A lot of monkeys would rather stay home and sit their fat azzes on the couch and collect welfare I guess....

Anybody hear of the Jones Act?

Here's 5,000 tonnes up on the hook. There sits 500,000 pounds/hour of super-heated steam capability. The next lift delivered another 500,000 pounds...

Another sub was christened yesterday at Electric boat in Groton, CT.

another sub headed to the fleet