Politics

kbd512 · 2024-02-20 03:54:52

This is what I see happening in my country:

'Every real estate developer everywhere does this': Kevin O'Leary reacts to Trump civil fraud case

SF re-examines procurement process after business ban on 30 states backfires

Kevin O'Leary is not a Trump fan, but he's not going to spend another dime on real estate development in New York, because the judge in President Trump's case just made up the law. President Trump has been ordered to bay $354M for a crime that had no victims, something that all other real estate developers do. Every real estate developer in the world does what President Trump did. Are we going to prosecute them all? If so, do you think we'll have any real estate development in the future? Who's going to do it if you immediately turn around and take their money from them?

Well, guess what?

In Democrats' never-ending quest to "get Trump", they're alienating business owners, real estate developers, and anyone else with two Nickels to rub together who builds things. Kevin was going to put a data center in New York to use clean green hydro-power to run it. Now he's looking at West Virginia and coal power. Governor Kathy Hochul (D) was on TV reassuring busineses that their witch hunt against President Trump was some one-off event that won't happen again.

Mission accomplished?

They're getting rid of businesses and real estate developers that want to build things the way Democrats say they want them built. Believe whatever you want about people you hate, but if you apply your ideology often enough and publicly enough, then the message that gets delivered may not be what you intended. For all I know, maybe that is the message. If so, then all that money that was previously backing the Democrats is going to vanish. Fanatical ideology, especially one rooted in hatred, is ultimately very unhelpful. If you keep after it, eventually you alienate the people who would otherwise be sympathetic to your cause.

This is not that hard to understand when you remove politics, ideology, and fanaticism. If you're not allowed to use the value of your existing assets to secure a bank loan, using the existing property as collateral, then you're not going to see more real estate development. Wind turbine and photovoltaic farms are both examples of developed real estate. Keep after it, and you won't get any more of those, either.

Advanced societies die when they forget the basics of life.

Security - you can't have a society if everyone is terrified or being attacked
Family and Community - you can't enjoy the "goodies" of society without family and civics
Energy - you can't do anything useful without it
Food Production - your people don't survive without it
Manufacturing and Industry - your people don't have anything worth having without it

Tell your unintelligentsia to get out of their neurotic heads and refocus on the basics of society. If you have people who are doing things that are corrosive to civil society, then get them out of the driver's seat. Society doesn't run itself. Society doesn't make itself. The store doesn't run without a clerk, a person stocking the shelves, and delivery drivers bringing goods to the store. Mind the store! All these problems you think are unsolvable won't be resolved through self-immolation and depravity masquerading as compassion. Big over-arching problems only get solved when all the basics have been taken care of first. If you cannot get out of your heads long enough to notice everything going on around you, then you won't have a society. You're an increasingly cloistered sect of group-thinkers ignoring the fundamentals of civilized society. Instead of trying to get everyone to believe things that are both absurd and functionally useless as organizing or unifying principles, you need to go back to the basics.

RobertDyck · 2024-02-21 15:48:46

If Canada were to spend 2% of GDP on military, as NATO guidelines request, that would mean $38.5 billion Canadian dollars. Canada's military budget for this year is $26.45 billion. So that requires increasing military spending by $12 billion. After COVID spending and all spending of a left-wing progressive government, Canada's deficit is insanely large, and Canada's federal debt is out of control. The Liberal party had traditionally been moderate, but under our current Prime Minister it has gone way left. And it's a minority government. Liberals have been pandering to the NDP so that party will support the government. NDP is as far left as a European left-wing party. The NDP has issued an ultimatum to implement a pharmacare program by the end of this month or they stop supporting the government. The Canadian federal government cannot afford a fully government paid pharmacare program. Besides, our Constitution puts that in provincial jurisdiction. Rock / Hard-Place. There have been calls to reduce military spending by $1 billion, but the Conservative Party would have a cow if they tried that. Under Conservatives they might be able to increase military spending a little, cut rebate cheques to do so, but not to the NATO guideline.

kbd512 · 2024-02-21 23:09:45

RobertDyck,

You're kinda preaching to the choir about how ridiculous military spending has become, but there are 3 primary reasons for it!

1. Dictatorial governments only respect raw military power. They don't care about human decency and dignity, and they don't care about what you think your military budget should be. In real simple terms, the enemy gets a vote. If you fail to take notice of and demonstrate due diligence towards the military power accumulation of dictatorial governments, then as soon as they're able to, they will choose to use their power to dictate life to your people. You can try complaining to your enemies, but they're not likely to be amenable to your plight.

2. Over time all military weapons have had more electronic gadgetry crammed into them. This is not a recent phenomenon. The incredible cost of modern weapon systems is largely a function of all the money sunk into increasingly sophisticated sensors, computing power, control systems, and communications.

3. Scope creep and concurrent development compromises development times, production and rework, as well as the complexity of making any required changes to address design deficiencies. We used to have dedicated interceptors, attack aircraft, and bombers. Now we have hideously expensive multi-role stealth tactical fighters. We have tanks with gun computers, thermal imaging electro-optics, radar, self-defense systems that use their own radar to detect and intercept incoming missiles or shells, IFF, guided munitions, and electronically-controlled diesel or gas turbine engines.

kbd512 · 2024-02-22 00:04:06

US Navy's Latest Unlearnt Lesson in Concurrent Development and Scope Creep
We have nuclear powered aircraft carriers, the Ford class in particular, that attempted to implement 20+ (24 or 27 in total, IIRC) brand new technologies in a single class of ship, when the US Navy's own ship design policy expressly forbids implementing more than 2 new technologies into any single new class of ship, specifically because of what it does to cost, development timeline, and implementation problems- it does a number on design complexity. Attempts to make absolutely everything use electricity as the power source may provide the appearance of greater efficiency, but there are numerous practical limitations making the overall design and cost anything but time and resource efficient. It's the difference between understanding numbers on paper and real world operational usage of any particular system.

All American super carrier designs trace their lineage back to the Forrestal class. The only real improvement since Forrestal has been the power of the steam catapults, and the location of the aircraft elevators and superstructure to facilitate aircraft movement around the flight deck. The Kitty Hawk, Enterprise, Nimitz, and Ford classes were / are all of the same basic hull design as the Forrestal class, made progressively wider as tonnage increased, with the end result that the Ford class struggles to attain 30 knots. 30 knots is considered to be the minimum acceptable speed for launching and recovering all modern jet-powered CATOBAR naval aircraft. The Forrestal class could attain 35 knots. Every heavier / wider super carrier hull put in the water since then has progressively sacrificed more speed margin in favor of a progressively wider beam to account for increased displacement. The crushing weight of all the electrical equipment implemented in the Ford class mandated that the entire hull be fabricated from HY-100 to HY-120 steels, which are notoriously difficult to form and weld. Our submarine program uses them now, and they're having weld cracking problems with the Virginia class. Seawolf class had similar problems during its construction. It's obviously stronger than the STS (Special Treatment Steel) of the Forrestal class, but the trade-off was dramatically more difficulty and time spent on fabrication, rework due to cracked welds, rejection of plates that did not pass material property quality control, etc. STS was a forerunner HY-80 equivalent, very similar to what later became HY-80, STS itself being an Americanized British inter-war armor steel.

The US Navy's entire stated reason for development of the Ford class was increased sortie generation rate, up to a maximum theoretical surge rate of 270 sorties per day. As we're about to show, this is a ridiculous nonsensical requirement that has no bearing on the operational employment of an aircraft carrier.

Decades ago, the US Navy concocted an asinine experiment to prove the utility of the Nimitz class by demonstrating its asserted surge sortie generation rate of 240 sorties during a 24 hour period. They did that by carefully grooming all aircraft to be used in their experiment and by embarking dozens of additional aircrew members who would never be present during real world military operations. I guess 240 per day wasn't enough. Those extra 30 sorties that the Ford class would theoretically be capable of if the EMALS and AAG ever attains its asserted reliability levels, has never once been demonstrated in the real world because the EMALS catapults and electrical arresting gear routinely suffer system casualties long before the same number of cycles before failure as the supposedly "less reliable" steam catapults and hydraulic arresting gear.

During testing from March through June 2022 (after the PIA), EMALS achieved a reliability of 614 mean cycles between operational mission failures (MCBOMF) during 1,841 catapult launches (where a cycle is the launch of one aircraft).

For comparison, we normally conduct about 8,000 launches and recoveries per deployment, and normally one of the four catapults will fail once or twice during that deployment. Steam and hydraulics are a pain to constantly service and I routinely saw the men working on the cats and arresting gear before and after flight ops secures for the day. That said, serious failures of the legacy equipment were relatively uncommon. We worked out the problems from the 1950s to the present day.

The electromagnetic-powered catapult system is supposed to operate 4,166 "cycles," or launches, between operational mission failures.

That reliability level will probably never be achieved in practice, because it's 6.8X of the current reliability rate and we've been tinkering with EMALS for over a decade now.

The AAG is supposed to cycle 16,500 times between failures, but in recent testing it has broken down after roughly 450 cycles.

A 37X reliability increase for an electrical system? That's probably never going to happen, either. 450 cycles is a casualty that prevents recovery every 3.75 days of routine flight ops, meaning 120 sorties per day. AAG (Advanced Arresting Gear) is more unreliable electrical crap that fails to be as reliable as or less expensive to maintain than hydraulics. It's merely another example of someone inserting their green religious zealotry into the expensive and dangerous realm of recovering aircraft at sea.

That brings us to electric weapons elevators that did not function at all for years after USS Ford was initially built.

Individually, any one of those problems was not necessarily a showstopper. We could throw money at it until we figured it out. When the aircraft elevators, weapons elevators, aircraft catapults, and arresting gear are all based upon unreliable electrical technology that mixes extreme forces, half-baked designs, and life-or-death stakes in an operational environment, only bad things can happen.

This is the fundamental lie that was sold to the Navy and by the Navy to Congress:

Current steam catapults are inefficient and are maintenance intensive; however recent development of EMALS systems design will reduce maintenance and increase reliability. The EMALS will require 20,000 cubic feet of space, a 50% reduction in the total size of the system, mostly below the flight deck, compared to the 40,000 cubic feet for a steam catapult system which requires separate and heavier components to accomplish its tasks.

Every word of that is objectively provably false. The decreased space claim within the gallery deck was offset by an increase in space required elsewhere on the ship, specifically electric generators and reactor power output. EMALS requires more space, not less, EMALS is heavier not lighter, EMALS requires dramatically more maintenance, not less. EMALS mandated the use of special high-strength steels (HY-100 to HY-120) to offset the increase in top weight. A failure of one EMALS catapult or associated energy storage and distribution subsystem takes all three of the other EMALS catapults offline with it. If the energized parts of the system need to be repaired, then it takes 4 hours to spin down the flywheels. That last part is totally unlike the existing C13 steam catapults of the Nimitz class. The bow of the ship could be gone, but if it was still floating afterwards, Cat 3 and Cat 4 would remain operational on a Nimitz class ship. EMALS was supposedly designed that way for safety, to always ensure adequate power to support a launch. Great idea, bad implementation.

kbd512 · 2024-02-22 00:06:40

Ford is more than 3 times as expensive as the last Nimitz class carriers, meaning $15B per Ford class vs $4.5B per Nimitz class. The 4 ships of the Forrestal class cost $2.5B in 2023 dollars. That means each Ford class built, and there are 4 of them now, cost as much as 6 Forrestal class ships. For the $60B spent on Ford class carriers, we could have had 24 Forrestal class carriers, meaning 12 super carriers at sea at any given time.

In real world sustained combat operations over Viet Nam, the Forrestal class would routinely launch 120 sorties per day, or 1,440 sorties per day for all 12 ships that would be at sea, actively launching planes, for the same $60B spent either way. The 6 Ford class ships that would put to sea at any given time could launch a maximum of 1,620 sorties for a 24 hour period only, assuming all of their catapults didn't stop working for a 4 hour period where the flywheels spin down, dropping back to 160 per day, same as the Nimitz class, so 960 sorties per day for all 6 Ford class ships that would be at sea.

All of that fundamentally ignores crew rest, and the fact that the Ford class is now deploying with 48 combat jets. The Forrestal class routinely carried 72 combat jets during the Viet Nam War. Either each aircrew and aircraft will perform 5.6 missions per day with only 48 combat jets, or sortie generation rate is total nonsense that has zero bearing on real combat operations. We only have 48 jets aboard now because we don't have the jets or aircrews to embark more. That means the 96 combat jets Nimitz embarked for their surge experiment is never going to happen because the Navy already blew its wad of cash on expensive ships with pointless capabilities, which is what President Trump was really after when he talked about steam vs electric, and no, he doesn't posses the intimate first-hand knowledge of operational reality, nor does he know anything about super carriers. If someone with his understanding of the world can reach the same conclusion without knowing everything I know, then it tells me even Joe Blow walking down the street can see that we've overvalued quality to the point that there is no quantity left to do something useful with. Presidents Putin and Xinping are not deterred by appearances, but by real routinely demonstrated combat capabilities.

Immediately following 9/11, our carrier sailed to within striking range of targets in Afghanistan, and we averaged about 120 sorties per day. We didn't do any surges. We dropped a lot more bombs the first 3 months compared to the second 4 months at sea, but that's because there were fewer and fewer targets worth striking with our "expensive" (to us in the airwing) JDAMs, as compared to dumb iron bombs which our crews were trained to drop accurately because they had real training. Do we like JDAMs? Sure do. Do we need JDAMs? For some missions. Did that fancy guidance kit still add $20,000 (back then) to the cost of a $2,000 Mk83 or Mk84? You bet. We seldom if ever fired missiles at anything. I think they had 1 or 2 air defense radars which we immediately killed. We had 2 carrier battle groups, one covering day air operations, the other covering night air operations. We were able to perform round-the-clock strike operations because we had 2 carriers to spare for Operation Enduring Freedom. The value of our carriers was having round-the-clock precision strike and air defense from a mobile air base that isn't as easy to target as a stationary air field in the middle of the combat zone. You need more ships and more planes to do that, not fewer more theoretically capable planes. A lone F-35 can only ever be in one place at one time.

Would I rather have a pair of tricked-out Ford class carriers loaded with 5 full 12-plane squadrons of F-35s, if money was no object?

Absolutely, but money is an object, as you pointed out. We currently have 1 squadron of 10 F-35s per carrier, and that's probably all we're ever going to get because they cost the US Navy $110M to $120M per copy, because so few of them are made relative to the A and B models. There's no achievable economy of scale. The rest of the jets are either legacy Hornets on their last legs or Super Hornets burning through flight hours and airframe service life like they're going out of style.

kbd512 · 2024-02-22 01:12:51

Zumwalt class Stealth Destroyer - an experimental "stealthy" tumblehome cruiser hull with lots of unreliable electrical and electronic crap that never has and never will work properly, 155mm cannons that fired ammo as expensive as a Tomahawk cruise missile with a 10X greater range and 10X larger warhead, which also never worked, and we arrive at the answer to a question that nobody asked. $30B squandered and counting. No mission yet assigned. It looks somewhat like a warship, but isn't. No CIWS or RAM to protect a $9B stealth destroyer with a combustible composite superstructure from gomers with drones. We're presently loading them up with 12 $40M hypersonic ballistic missile, because Uncle Sugar never met a boondoggle he didn't like. $30B would've purchased 12 Flight III Arleigh Burke class destroyers that the Navy desperately needs to replace retiring Ticonderoga class cruisers.

Freedom and Independence class Littoral Combat Ships - experimental multi-mission frigates without the firepower of a real frigate, cracks in their hulls before ships ever left the construction yard, unreliable power and propulsion systems, and sensors or weapon systems that never worked properly. Again, no mission was ever assigned because they don't work. Congress finally pulled the plug after more than two dozen of them had been built. All the money squandered on these ships could've paid for an equal number of real frigates that do frigate things. Lockheed's design has a perfectly usable hull that is being used as a real frigate by other allied nations, but with reliable propulsion and all the gadget gimmicks eliminated in favor of proven reliable combat systems. The all-Aluminum hulls from AUSTAL are simply unworkable designs for longevity and combat survival. They could be used as competent mine and submarine hunters, but all hulls are being retired and replaced with the Constellation class.

Ford class Nuclear Powered Aircraft Carrier - a completely experimental class of $15B super carriers with "new everything", from the steel used to build them, to the reactor design, to every other piece of major equipment installed on the ship. These are essentially $15B training ships that are never sent to combat zones on their own because they're not expected to function to specifications. Did I forget to mention that their brand new air defense / airspace management radar systems don't work properly, either? There are no known solutions as of yet, but we're still building more of them. When you're stuck on stupid, it's better to act dumb than to have the courage to admit there's a leadership problem.

Constellation Class - a completely redesigned "FREMM" frigate one-off that shares almost nothing in common with the original FREMM frigate design. They're already over-budget and the first ship will arrive late. This is another clean sheet engineering exercise wherein the Navy lied to Congress about what they were really doing, after they were explicitly instructed to select an off-the-shelf proven frigate design and to make only the modifications minimally necessary to mount American weapon systems inside the hull. FREMM and Constellation only share superficial visual similarity, with respect to the basic hull form. Constellation's displacement has been substantially increased over FREMM as well, so even its hull has been modified.

In addition to all that hot garbage, the Navy is now blowing money on experimental "large unmanned surface vessels", which is gibberish for wasting tax money on something that is a complete contradiction in terms- a large (but too small to be useful) VLS barge without onboard sensors. 8 to 16 VLS cells on a 2,000t corvette-like ship. The Navy asserted that we couldn't fit 16 VLS on the 4,000t Freedom and Independence class frigates, so let's try to cram in more VLS to a ship half that size, with no sensors to feed targeting data to the weapons and no crew onboard to maintain the ship. Now we're getting 32 VLS cell frigates when Congress wants 64 VLS per frigate, because even they're smart enough to understand that magazine depth matters. It wouldn't do the Navy any good, though, because we have zero reloads available for the VLS cells we do have. There's no budget to buy more missiles and no capacity to make more.

Virginia class - we're now taking a competent fast attack boat beyond its original design parameters. On top of that, we're having problems with maintenance and hulls cracking to boot. It's highly questionable as to whether or not we can provide 4 additional boats of this class to our Australian allies, in addition to all the boats that the US Navy is waiting on, for lack of shipyard capacity. SpaceNut can probably speak to this.

Columbia class - another smorgasbord of technological gadgetry that's over-budget and will arrive late as a result. Our Ohio class replacement is not ready for prime time, either.

We really should have 3 distinct classes of submarines, fast attack (torpedoes only), cruise missile / land attack, and ballistic missile for strategic deterrence.

Basically, this is an ever-growing list of ship design failures made by people who either don't know how to design reasonably good warships or they're fixated on pointless gadgetry. It's time to bring back the Bureau of Ships to the US Navy. Rather than simply complain, I'm going to offer up what I think are reasonable solutions.

Calliban · 2024-02-22 04:58:38

The Type 26 Frigate is a joint project between UK, Canada and Australia. The idea behind this project was that the three nations could share development costs and achieve scale economies in systems manufacture that would allow each to get more for their money. This is one of the arguments behind the CANZUK alliance. It should allow each party to reduce costs overall and punch above its weight. One of the reasons the US is able to field such a large military is that they benefit from scale effects that smaller nations cannot muster without pooling their resources. That is what Type 26 is all about and it could be the first of many such joint programmes.

Unfortunately, there have been complications. Each party has different product requirements, meaning that one product doesn't quite meet the needs of all three parties. Regulatory requirements are different in each country. Each nation maintains its own shipbuilding facilities, which dillutes scale economy benefits.

Still, I think this cooperation is a step in the right direction and it has reduced development costs for each party. A strategic partnership of commonwealth nations makes a lot of sense as the global order breaks down. We are each very much dependant on global trade across the oceans. Having a joint naval construction programme and a close naval participation may allow these countries to maintain global trade networks as the US withdraws from this role. The Americans are tired of paying for a system that everyone else uses. I can't really blame them. But for the other nations of the western world to step into this role is difficult. Socialist government programmes have grown to the point where finding an extra 2% of GDP for military spending is going to be tough. But we need to do it. Otherwise the global sea lanes that we depend upon are going to become unsustainable.

Last edited by Calliban (2024-02-22 05:00:59)

kbd512 · 2024-02-22 16:09:36

Calliban,

There are some unmistakable trends in the design of modern warships and cargo ships.

1. Design top speeds have increased, to the point that most ocean going cargo ships are now capable of 25 knots. If your ship can't attain 25 knots without excessive fuel burn rate, then it can't keep up with an aircraft carriers or cargo ships. Cargo ships have become larger and more robust while warships have shrunk in size and become rather flimsy, trading hull weight and increased fabrication costs, enabled by ultra high tensile strength steels, for installed equipment or cargo weight.

2. Design tonnages have increased dramatically. What Americans and Europeans call a frigate today was a light cruiser by WWII standards. WWII light cruisers had 6 to 9 powerful 8 inch guns, real armor, lots of deck space for weapons mounts, could achieve at least 30 knots, and they were still stable in high sea states because superstructure sizes were relatively modest. Destroyers are now reaching into WWII cruiser or heavy cruiser tonnage ranges. The Zumwalt class, for example, would be classified as a heavy cruiser by WWII standards, at 15,907t. The WWII Oregon City class heavy cruiser that preceded the larger post-WWII Des Moines class heavy cruisers, displaced about 2,000t less than Zumwalt. The Long Beach class nuclear powered guided missile cruiser, last true cruiser hull ever built for the US Navy, only displaced 15,540t. All US Navy cruisers built since Long Beach were scaled-up destroyer hull designs, not true cruisers.

3. To compensate for making the warships far too small to fit all the required equipment, designers have resorted to excessively large and destabilizing superstructures that take up most of the available deck space for weaponry, while remaining top-heavy, even with superstructures made from Aluminum or composite fire hazards. This is how we end up with expensive frigate and destroyer hulls that cost a lot of time and money to build, relative to any much larger civilian ship, have no armor to speak of, aren't very stable in high sea states, and have limited magazine depth despite their larger physical size and displacement. If the superstructure takes up more than 40% of available deck space, then the ship is too small to fit the required equipment.

4. As previously noted, decreasing the physical size of warships increases their construction costs dramatically, because of how ship designers compensated. The 9,900t Flight III Arleigh Burke costs $2.5B. The San Antonio class LPD, at 25,000t, also costs $2.5B to build. Both are warships built to US Navy specification with appropriate compartmentalization, damage control / firefighting equipment, etc. Areligh Burkes are capable of 30 knots with 100,000shp, Ticonderoga class cruisers, slightly longer, 30 knots with 80,000shp, and San Antonio 22knots with 40,000shp. If the San Antonio class was equipped with a pair of LM2500s, then it would also be capable of near 30 knots. The difference is that San Antonio is so much larger that it could have double the number of VLS cells of a Ticonderoga class, so a good number of them dedicated to offensive rather than defensive weapons. Thus, larger ships actually cost less to build and relative capability goes way up, because internal volume goes up and the need for a deck space-robbing superstructure goes down. Fuel capacity increases dramatically, critical for any fight in the Pacific, and living space improves as well. Crew size is closely tied to the quantity and complexity of the equipment being maintained, not the size of the ship.

Spruances, Ticonderogas, and Arleigh Burkes are all built on the same Spruance class destroyer hull, all powered by the same engines, and are all strictly limited by the internal volume of that design, which is why Arleigh Burkes and Ticonderogas have such massive superstructures that consume more than 50% of available deck space. Larger ships are likewise cheaper to operate, especially at high cruising speeds of 20 knots or more. Long Beach had 80,000shp and achieved 30 knots, despite being dramatically larger than any ship built on a Spruance class hull by a lot. Long Beach suffered from the same massive superstructure problem of the Spruance hulls, largely driven by primitive 1950s vacuum tube radar electronics and equally massive but primitive air defense missiles. Ticonderoga, a much smaller conventionally powered pseudo-cruiser, also only required 80,000shp to achieve 30 knots, using its longer hull to burn less fuel at a given speed than a wider / shorter hull. The moral of the story is that a pair of LM2500s and a very large hull is the way forward for low-cost cruiser or multi-purpose ship design.

Long Beach and Arleigh Burke have almost identical draft, but Long Beach has a much wider beam and is much longer, yet she also achieved 30 knots using 20,000shp less propulsive power. That is the major advantage of a larger but comparatively slender hull form- it enables higher sustained cruising speeds using a lot less power. The gigantic Emma Maersk class cargo ships achieve 25 knots using 109,000shp of installed power, possibly 149,000shp if the diesel-electric generators are configured to contribute, despite being dramatically larger and heavier than super carriers. Emma Maersk carries 156,907 deadweight tons, meaning the cargo tonnage alone is 1.5X the full load displacement of a Nimitz class super carrier, or equal to 3 empty Forrestal class super carriers, from a hull with a dramatically wider beam and deeper draft than any American super carrier.

5. Enormous amounts of money are spent on a ship's installed equipment, especially radars, electro-optics, and communications. Even a modern cargo ship has vastly superior sensors and communications when compared to a WWII era battleship or fleet carrier, but this costs real money. The trend towards electrification of ship propulsion has also pushed cost and tonnage towards unsustainable levels. Drive shafts and gear boxes are not that expensive nor complex to maintain, when compared to electrified equivalents. We're just now starting to see the introduction of highly efficient boilers and gas turbine engines. The podded electric propulsion systems are notorious for leaking sea water into the motor, or worse, the hull of the ship itself. Electric motors are great for very large ship maneuverability in tight spaces, but terrible for overall reliability in open ocean, where reliability and the ability to withstand battle damage are more important than theoretical efficiency gains.

Calliban · 2024-02-22 18:37:09

Kbd512, thanks that is interesting. It will take me a while to digest all of what you have written. A power of 100,000HP is nearly 75MW. That is a lot of power. A GT will burn through 20te of diesel fuel per hour at that power level, which is 24 cubic metres. That is a lot of volume and mass that has to be devoted to fuel for an ocean going ship. And it is a lot of combustible inventory under a battle damage scenario.

If the cost of naval nuclear reactors was a little more reasonable, they would be a good fit for this application. Regulators in the UK aren't happy if the cost of nuclear ownership isn't somewhere in the stratosphere. They tend to assume that if a nuclear reactor isn't unaffordable, the owner hasn't been spending enough on safety. These people really do think that way. But a twin PWR plant would be far more compact and power dense than GTs and their requisite fuel. We could actually afford some decent armour plating. The ship would have effectively infinite range and duration. But a significant downside is that the ship would be out of action for several months every 5-10 years for refuelling. Type 26 will have hybrid electric propulsion from what I have been told. GTs will drive turbogenerators, but the ship will have a gearbox capable of direct mechanical drive from a diesel backup. I don't know the exact arrangement.

The use of aluminium superstructure is limited in Type 26 to funnels. There were concerns around fatigue life of aluminium components in repeated exposure to heavy seas. The use of aluminium isn't neccesarily a design weakness. But care should be taken where it is applied. A funnel is less mission critical and is also simple to replace if fatigue cracks are found in service.

I cannot offer much insight into the type of steel used for hulls or its tensile strength. But modern warships do look extremely flimsy to me. The Royal Navy had a conflict with Iceland some decades back over fishing rights off the Scottish coast. The Icelandics rammed destroyers with their fishing boats causing substantial hull damage. The cost was quite large and the destroyers were under orders not to open fire on civilian ships so had to take the hits. I can remember asking a navy chap why surface ships look so flimsy and had no appreciable hull armour. He told me that modern ships were design to allow shells to pass through them without detonating. That sounds far fetched to me. That design choice didn't do anything to protect the Sheffield from an exorcet hit in the Falklands. The missile easily penetrated the ships hull, causing a devastating internal fire that wrecked the ship and killed 20 its crew. Had the ship been armoured, the missile would have compacted and exploded outside of the hull. It would have done a lot of damage, but it wouldn't have been a complete loss of ship the way it was.

Last edited by Calliban (2024-02-22 18:54:07)

SpaceNut · 2024-02-22 20:43:44

Another speaker is on the way to the axe by Republicans Push For Discharge Petition Against Mike Johnson

Calliban · 2024-02-23 04:30:02

Maybe the speaker takes issue with sending tens of billions of dollars to ensure border security of another country, at a time that the US is facing mass invasion. Just a thought.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2024-02-23 06:15:56

Is there a clownish Uni-party circus acted out

I don't know much on the whole left vs right thing but Mike Johnson is possible not connected to reality, possibly delusional and a way out there loony, a Creationist who can take the Bible literally, he also voiced support for the Antifa BLM George Floyd rioters that were rioting and murdering and burning across multiple US cities. It could be personal for him, they adopted a Black Teen Kid but he grew up to be trouble, Mike Johnson explained his life as a movie fantasy where in a Hollywood fictional entertainment product a Black Teenager gets taken in by a family a fictional role by an actor who goes on to become a football star, he seems to think his life a fantasy Hollywood movie. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s adopted son had multiple records, a string of run-ins with the law enforcement for crimes ranging from drug possession to violence, illegally possessing a concealed weapon to other crimes to theft, Mike Johnson did not encourage reason or responsibility for these crimes he instead blamed 'White Racist America' and the 'Racism of Cops'

Was there any logic to putting in a guy like 'Mike Johnson' after they voted to oust McCarthy there was risk of the position falling to Hakeem Jeffries who seems to be possibly even worse, an imbecile, corrupt, idiotic, racist, incompetent, Mike Johnson is US Republican party and Hakeem Jeffries is US Democrat, he often voices support for Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar's type of jihadi-like or Sharia-Law like words, he also takes 'inspiration' from Venezuela, the USA, Australia and European Union condemned the country as entering a dictatorship like condition and criticized conditions placed on the people of Venezuela, yet it inspires Hakeem Jeffries.

Some local US issues

NJ Cop Slams Police Chief On Hood Of Cruiser For Allegedly Showing Up 'Drunk Again'
https://jalopnik.com/nj-cop-slams-polic … 1851279385
Chief Leonard Guida has since been placed on paid administrative leave.

Let's hope a colony with security and cops on Mars won't have a chief with similar issues

President Biden to meet with Alexei Navalny's widow and daughter
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- … rcna140022

G20 says two-state solution only answer to Israel-Palestinian conflict
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-ea … 024-02-22/

South Korea doctors’ strike: ‘severe’ public health alert issued for first time
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ … test-seoul

Hungarian foreign minister visiting Iran for trade negotiations "forgot" that Tehran supplies Russia with weapons
https://news.yahoo.com/hungarian-foreig … 58023.html

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2024-02-23 06:28:31)

kbd512 · 2024-02-23 06:20:39

Calliban,

Some of that extra installed power is due to the greater quantity of installed electrical equipment aboard the Arleigh Burke, to the point that the ship has to run both the generators and all 4 gas turbines to simultaneously operate the radar suite and steam at 30 knots, but a lot of what you see is down to hull design. Spruance (anti-sub / anti-ship guided missile destroyer), Ticonderoga (anti-air guided missile cruiser), and Arleigh Burke (anti-sub / anti-air guided missile destroyer) are simply too small for all the installed equipment the Navy requires.

If we built a modern conventionally powered Long Beach class cruiser hull, replacing the pair of 2,250 metric ton reactor compartments with a pair of LM2500+G5 gas turbines and large fuel bunkers, then we would have a ship capable of steam at 20 knots for quite a ways prior to underway replenishment, as well as carrying more VLS cells loaded with offensive rather than defensive weapons.

LM2500 Thermal Efficiency (simple cycle): 36% - LM2500, 38% LM2500+, 39% LM2500+G4, 41% LM2500+G5

Spruance Class
Dimensions: 563ft Long, 55ft beam, 29ft draft, beam-to-length 9.77%
Full Load Displacement: 9,400 metric tons; Fuel Load: 1,703 metric tons
Speed: 32.5 knots; Range: 6,900 statute miles at 20 knots
Power: 4X GE LM2500 (21,500hp each), 86,000hp total
Weapons: 61X Mk41 VLS cells, 8X Harpoon box launchers, 2X Mk 45 Mode 2 5inch guns, 1X CIWS, 1X 21-cell RAM launcher, 2X Mk32 triple torpedo launchers
Crew: About 334 (19 officers, 315 enlisted)

Ticonderoga Class
Dimensions: 567ft Long, 55ft beam, 34ft draft, beam-to-length 9.7%
Full Load Displacement: 9,800 metric tons; Fuel Load: 1,703 metric tons
Speed: 32.5 knots; Range: 6,900 statute miles at 20 knots
Power: 4X GE LM2500 (21,500hp each), 86,000hp total
Weapons: 122X Mk41 VLS cells, 8X Harpoon box launchers, 2X Mk 45 Mode 2 5inch guns, 2X CIWS, 2X Mk32 triple torpedo launchers
Crew: About 330 (30 officers, 300 enlisted)
Fuel Burn Rate: 10 knots - 800gph, 20 knots - 1,600gph, 30 knots - 5,400gph
24hr Avg Plant Load: 2.666MWe (no burn rate data for generating electrical power)

Flight III Arleigh Burke Class
Dimensions: 509.5ft Long, 66ft beam, 31ft draft, beam-to-length 12.95%
Full Load Displacement: 9,900 metric tons; Fuel Load: 1,733 metric tons
Speed: 30 knots; Range: 5,100 statute miles at 20 knots
Power: 4X GE LM2500 (26,250hp each), 105,000hp total
Weapons: 96X Mk41 VLS cells, 1X Mk 45 Mod 4 5inch gun, 1X CIWS, 1X 21-cell RAM launcher
Crew: About 325 (25 officers, 300 enlisted)
Fuel Burn Rate (data for Flight I and II): 10 knots - 730gph, 20 knots - 1,600gph, 30 knots - 6,400gph
24hr Avg Fuel Burn Rate for 2MWe (data for Flight I and II): 332gph

Proposed Conventionally Powered Long Beach Class
Dimensions: 721.25ft Long, 71.5ft beam, 30.58ft draft, beam-to-length 9.91%
Full Load Displacement: 15,540 metric tons; Fuel Load: 3,500 metric tons
Speed: 30 knots; Range: 13,800 statute miles at 20 knots
Power: 2X GE LM2500+G5 (45,997hp each), 91,994hp total (derated to maximize hot section life); TPV waste heat electric power generation to save 330gph
Weapons: 183 Mk41 VLS cells, 2X Mk71 8inch guns, 2X CIWS, 2X 21-shot RAM launcher
Crew: About 345 (30 officers, 315 enlisted)
Anticipated Fuel Burn Rate: 10 knots - 570gph, 20 knots - 1,270gph, 30 knots - 5,070gph

2 new technologies only - TPV for electricity and 8 inch guns (modernized Mk71 Major Caliber Lightweight Gun)
Why only 2 new technologies? Following the US Navy's own rules about ship design!

That is from actual empirical data collected by the US Navy, and here's your souce (I have various others for confirmation):
Alternative Practices to Improve Surface Fleet Fuel Efficiency

It's from a Masters of Science paper submitted to the Naval Post Graduate School in 2014. I have older and newer sources as well, including from VAMOSC (Naval Visibility and Management of Operating and Support Costs), other Naval Post Graduate School research, and operational reports. I have burn rates for every conventionally powered ship in the fleet, to include historical ships, from about WWII onwards when we made a point to record and compile such data. I have less data for British and German ships, but still have some. There is nothing remarkably different between those three naval powers. Experience between America, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, and the various nordic countries is broadly similar with the same kind of power plant. I can't intelligently speak to Russian or Chinese warship design or operating experience. That data is not in the public domain, either.

For historical reference purposes:
War Service Fuel Consumption of U.S. Naval Surface Vessels

Recall what I said about finer hulls burning less fuel at higher cruising speeds and flank speeds, not that there was a major difference at lower cruising speeds. Arleigh Burke burns less fuel at 10 knots than Ticonderoga, but not by a lot. We almost never travel at 10 knots, though. 15 to 20 knots is an average cruising speed for a carrier battle group. When carriers launch or recover planes, they're always steaming fast enough to put 30 knots of wind over the deck. It's not a suggestion, it's mandatory.

All ships listed above are twin shaft / twin screw configurations. Single screws are more efficient but seldom used outside of commercial shipping, for redundancy's sake. I propose we also incorporate the new-ish (already in commercial service with small to medium-sized commercial vessels, so increasingly a well-known quantity) Sharrow propeller design to knock another 25% off the propulsive power required between 20 and 30 knots. Sharrow propeller efficiency up to 15 knots is no better or worse than a traditional propeller design, but the Sharrow is quieter at all speeds, most especially at the speeds Navy ships typically steam at. That should put the new Long Beach at 953gph at 20 knots. There are also rudder modifications which can yield additional fuel efficiency improvements, most frequently used on large cargo ships.

Achieveable Long Beach Range using LM2500+G5 / TPV electric power / Sharrow propeller:
3,500 metric tons / 1,134,730 gallons of total fuel / 22,872 gallons per day = 49 full days steaming at 20 knots = 23,520 nautical miles = 27,048 statute miles
1,134,730gal total / 121,680gpd = 9 full days steaming at 30 knots = 6,480 nautical miles = 7,452 statute miles

That's a high speed attack run using a Nimitz and Long Beach carrier strike group, from a naval base in the Pacific, to strike targets near Chinese waters, then returning to base, at 30 knots. With that kind of speed and range, we can initate a surprise attack, walk away from their fleet, and they can't keep up.

The proposed new Long Beach class would mount 6X smaller 9 RMA SPY-6 arrays, which are touted to give full SPY-1 performance. This would not provide full SPY-6 capabilities implemented by the Flight III Arleigh Burkes, but it would provide much lower cost / top weight / power consumption while slightly exceeding overall SPY-1 performance. Flight III Arleigh Burke mounts 4X 27 RMA SPY-6 arrays. This design would have 3 of these modular planar radar arrays on the forward superstructure and 3 arrays on the aft superstructure. Deck weapons layout would consist of a 61 cell Mk41 forward / amidships (between the superstructures) / aft. Each Mk41 would contain SM6 (anti-air and ballistic or depressed trajectory supersonic anti-ship), Tomahawk (anti-ship or land attack), and a handful of ASROC (anti-submarine rocket-propelled torpedoes). 8 inch guns would be mounted fore and aft, same as Spruance / Virginia (retired nuclear powered guided missile cruisers) / Ticonderoga. CIWS and RAM launchers would be mounted port and starboard, one of each forward and aft. Apart from the larger deck guns and dramatically smaller and lighter superstructures, it would not have any levels above the waterline, making it very stable in high sea states and after taking on water from battle damage.

The brand new Chinese Type 055 destroyers, which are the size of cruisers, can only manage 5,750 statue miles at 18 knots. That means our carriers and cruisers can simply walk away from them in a sustained steaming contest, because their fuel burn rate is far too high to keep up. That is how we managed to conduct surprise / sneak attacks against the Japanese fleets-at-anchor towards the midpoint of WWII. We had more efficient boilers and ships optimized for speed, so our fleet carriers and cruisers could steam at 30+ knots to conduct surprise night raids and then leave the area at high speed before dawn. The Japanese had ineffectual destroyers or destroyer escorts that could run down our fleet carrier strike groups, but then they faced the guns of our escorting heavy cruisers. Our cruisers did not acquit themselves very well against Japanese cruisers and battleships, but our naval aircraft sunk or severely damaged whatever our submarines didn't. Our destroyers had outsized impacts on breaking up Japanese attacks. Packs of them would attack Japanese battle lines. They weren't really capable of sinking larger ships using gunfire alone, but our 5 inch Mk38's extreme rate of fire relative to other naval guns of similar caliber, combined with topedoes that were lethal to all ships, would see them badly maul Japanese cruisers and destroyers. In return, our destroyers were also badly mauled or sunk outright. The damage inflicted was out-of-proportion to cost, though.

Wham-and-scram is still a perfectly valid carrier battle group fighting tactic. You start losing ships when you stick around for the enemy's torpedo or anti-ship missile attacks. You will lose ships, aircraft, and men either way, so those ships can be nominal cost, relatively speaking, used in an intelligent way to maximize the damage to your enemy, or you can engage in pointless slugfests that you might very well lose. The Chinese are top dog in the anti-ship missile department.

If there is a role in the modern Navy for frigates of the Littoral Combat Ship variety, then it would be mounting 8 inch guns and rocket-propelled torpedoes, getting close to China or Russia's smaller ships, especially near islands or coastlines, attacking from a modest over-the-horizon distance using torpedoes, which nobody has any real defense against, and then finishing them off with cannon fire. The first torpedo hit is an instant mission kill on a destroyer-sized ship or smaller. The second is probably going to sink it without immediate assistance. Even if it hasn't been sunk by one or two torpedoes, 260 pound shells fired from the 8 inch gun will either set fire to the ship or detonate warheads in their missile magazines, and then it's a total loss. Any modern ship's superstructure would be obliterated by a hit from an 8 inch shell. Without fire control radars and sensors or a bridge, modern warships are reduced to point defense with small caliber automatic cannons. All of those sophisticated air defense capabilities against anti-ship cruise or ballistic missile attacks doesn't amount to a hill of beans against a torpedo and naval gunfire attack. That first near-miss shell detonation that sends a geyser of water a couple hundred feet into the air will really get your attention.

kbd512 · 2024-02-23 11:55:09

I would like to note that for the Chinese Type 055 destroyer, it's beam-to-length is 11.1%, so it's closer to a cruiser hull than a destroyer, but also fits the general description of a cruiser in terms of size (larger than a destroyer and better armed) and hull design (designed for sustained speeds at or above 20 knots). It has a 21.5ft draft, which means it likely is not quite as stable in high sea states as a ship with a 5 to 10ft deeper draft. Since the Type 055 requires 152,000hp to achieve 30 knots, the overall hull design and propulsion scheme must be a compromise between a destroyer and a cruiser. The QC-280 is either a very thirsty engine or the fuel bunker capacity is somewhat limited. The Ticonderoga class, built between 1980 and 1994, either has significantly greater fuel bunker capacity or fuel efficiency, but I'm leaning towards the latter. China's new 153,547hp R0110 gas turbines, intended for their new CATOBAR aircraft carriers, are only 36% thermally efficient. GE has a similarly powerful gas turbine engine with a simple cycle efficiency of 46%. That must mean their QC-280 gas turbines are not very thermally efficient.

Chinese Type 055 Renhai Class Destroyer
Dimensions: 590.58ft Long, 65.58ft beam, 21.5ft draft, beam-to-length 11.1%
Full Load Displacement: 11,000 metric tons (standard load), 12,000 to 13,000 metric tons (full load)
Speed: 30+ knots (I'd wager top speed is around 32 to 33 knots); Range: 5,750 statute miles at 18 knots
Power: 4X QC-280 Gas Turbines (152,000hp)
Weapons: 112X GJB 5860-2006 VLS cells, 1X H/PJ-38 130mm gun, 1X 24-shot HQ-10 launcher (similar to RAM / RIM-116), 1X H/PJ-11 30mm CIWS, 2X triple torpedo launchers
Crew: About 300

Oregon City Class Cruiser
Dimensions: 673.42ft Long, 70.83ft beam, 26.33ft draft, beam-to-length 10.52%
Full Load Displacement: 13,920 metric tons (standard) 17,781 metric tons (full load)
Speed: 32.4 knots; Range: 11,500 statute miles at 15 knots
Power: 2X GE Geared Steam Turbines (120,000hp)
Weapons: 9X Mk55 8 inch guns, 12X Mk32 5 inch guns, 48X 40mm Bofors automatic cannons, 8X Oerlikon 20mm automatic cannons
Armor: 6 inch main belt; 2.5 inch main deck, 8 inch turret, 6 inch conning tower
Crew: About 1,142 (59 officers, 1,083 enlisted)

I can almost guarantee that Renhai and her sisters don't have a 6 inch main belt. She might have 1.5 to 2 inches of deck armor. People falsely state that armor makes ships too heavy, or that it makes them too slow, or that they have to burn extra fuel. This is patently false. WWII boiler efficiency was nothing to write home about, but that does not describe modern boilers or gas turbines or diesel engines. Renhai can achieve similar top speed to a much heavier American WWII era heavy cruiser, ostensibly made without the aid of CAD / CAM, equipped with real armor, but curiously equipped with far less installed power (if the mindlessly repeated falsehood about armor being too heavy or cumbersome was actually true). Renhai even has variable pitch props, which the Baltimore / Oregon City / Albany / Ticonderoga classes all lack. We typically use fixed-pitch props because they're more resistant to battle damage caused by near misses from large caliber shells, bombs, and torpedoes. The props are pitched to be most efficient at high cruising speeds. If it's slighly less efficient at 10 knots, then no big deal. We don't steam at 10 knots.

If you were to fire a typical anti-ship cruise missile at Renhai, it would open the ship up like an empty beer can. If you fired that same missile at Baltimore / Oregon City / Albany, it would still make a hole in the side of the ship, but the damage would be dramatically more localized. You can see what a difference any real armor makes from a hit between the armored gunwales and softer non-armored plate right below it on USS Stark / USS Samuel B Roberts / USS Cole, which were hit by anti-ship cruise missiles or large explosive charges from mines or suicide boats. The armor plate was dented and yes, still penetrated, but not completely blown out the side of the ship. Armor doesn't mean nobody dies. Armor typically means far fewer people die from one hit. That is the entire point behind putting armor on a ship. It's not a magical invincibility totem or utterly pointless because it can't stop everything.

The Baltimore and Oregon City class heavy cruisers are historically significant vessels for the US Navy because ships of those classes later became the first guided missile cruisers built (converted from guns, obviously) for the US Navy. The 5 inch guns were retained, all 8 inch guns were removed, basically everything above the main deck was removed and the deck layout completely altered to accommodate air defense missiles and missile guidance radars. This is where very high Aluminum alloy superstructures started with the US Navy. Each and every ship built with an Aluminum or composite superstructures since then has had corrosion damage problems that caused cracking and reweld or replacement, without exception, and that is the experience of all navies, not just the US Navy. The Albany class derivative of the Oregon City hull carried 104 gigantic 7,800lb Talos long range air defense missiles, 84 Tartar missiles (what later became the Standard Missile / SM2), 2X 5 inch guns, and 2X Mk32 triple torpedo launchers.

Renhai is historically significant to the PLAN / Chinese Navy because it's at least outwardly an even match for a Flight III Arleigh Burke or a Ticonderoga retrofitted with SPY-6. None of China's prior frigate or destroyer designs were equivalent to their western counterparts.

RobertDyck · 2024-02-23 20:38:49

SpaceNut wrote:

Another speaker is on the way to the axe by Republicans Push For Discharge Petition Against Mike Johnson

A discharge petition does not remove the speaker. It just forces a vote on the bill. The vote is 30 days after the discharge petition is filed. Mike Johnson sent the House on vacation for 2 weeks. Vacation weeks do not count toward the 30 days, so it delays the vote.

RobertDyck · 2024-02-23 21:04:53

Latest Canadian news: NDP announced the Liberal government agrees to their demand for a national pharmacare program. Text of the bill hasn't been released yet, so we don't know the details.

They also have a government funded $10/day childcare program, free dental for children whose parents do not have a dentist plan. They're mailing quarterly cheques to low income individuals who have gainful employment (income above a certain point, but below another). Child Care Benefit cheques to all parents. Parental leave paid through Canada's equivalent of Social Security. A "Housing Accelerator" program to get more housing built faster. I don't know how that last one works, it appears to transfer money to cities if they kinda-sorta reduce regulatory obstacles.

With all that, I don't know how they'll increase military spending.

tahanson43206 · 2024-02-23 21:14:47

For RobertDyck ...

First, thanks for helping our US readers who are too busy to follow the nuances of House of Representatives proceedings. I thought your explanation of the Discharge Petition was clear and I hope it will be helpful.

Second, thanks for the update on Canadian consideration of it's population. In the following statement, I intend the word "King" to stand for the entity that a democracy oriented population creates to try to perform self-government. {poorly remembered aphorism:} A wise King will look after the well-being of his population, because they will reward him handsomely with goods and services, and healthy youngsters to help to sustain the country in times of difficulty as well as opportunity.

I bring this up in the context of your observation about the challenge of sustaining defense spending while investing in the wellbeing of the population. There is a school of thought that a healthy, well-educated population will spontaneously create products and services to reward the "king" handsomely.

I have no idea if this poorly remembered aphorism actually works in the Real Universe.

(or in Canada, which ever comes first)

(th)

RobertDyck · 2024-02-24 12:20:59

In Canada, some time in the 1920s, party members of the Liberal Party passed a policy to create a national healthcare program. Elected Members of Parliament made absolutely no effort to make it happen. In the 1950s, healthcare cost was a concern. Groups of doctors, medical clinics, and hospitals set up what today would be called an HMO. Several small HMOs were created all over Canada, each different than the others, all inconsistent. Then in the late 1950s some provinces set up a province-wide healthcare system. Not every province, but it started with one, then other provinces copied. In the 1960s the federal government was a minority. The NDP was a new party, founded in 1961. They made a deal that they would support Liberals if they supported some NDP policies. The NDP demanded national healthcare. The bill passed in 1966. It was phases in slowly, because it replaced/absorbed provincial systems and HMOs.

There was debate how comprehensive the system should be. The more it covers, the more it costs. The compromise Canadians agreed to was all drugs while in hospital are covered, but absolutely no coverage for drugs when you're not in hospital. Dental is not covered. Vision care is not covered. (Lasic wasn't invented yet, so that mostly meant eye glasses.) And ambulance rides not covered. I always thought ambulance should be, but one ambulance driver claimed obese individuals who are to heavy to walk call for an ambulance ride just to get out of the house. I don't know what to say to that.

These changes the NDP are demanding break the deal. A fully taxpayer funded pharmacare program was estimated by the Parliamentary budget officer. He estimates $11.5 billion for 2024/2025. (Canada's budget year starts April 1.)

Another issue is drug cost. With 100% consumer paid drugs, if prices are too high, people just don't buy. That helps keep prices down. Any subsidy is treated as an excuse by big pharma to increase prices. Canada also has shorter drug patent times than in the US, so generic copies can be made sooner. And it's illegal for pharmacies to receive kick-backs from drug manufacturers or their agents. That last one has to be actively enforced. Sales agents for name-brand drugs often try to offer a kickback to pharmacies that carry their product and not the generic.

The founder/owner/CEO of the largest generic pharmaceutical manufacturer in Canada was found dead in his home a few years ago. His wife was dead beside him. Police refused to investigate. Family of the deceased demanded police investigation but nothing happened.

Media likes to talk as if big pharma doesn't want a government program because it will result in lowering prices. But large corporations increase their prices when selling to government, so I think they got it backwards.

RobertDyck · 2024-02-24 12:47:56

Trudeau has appointment his Environment Minister, an environmental political activist who base jumped from the CN Tower. An extremist who won't listen to scientists who say anything that disagrees with his cult doctrine, and doesn't care how much it hurts people or the economy.

I've tried to be diplomatic but my patience is exhausted. So is that of the majority of Canadians.

kbd512 · 2024-02-24 17:44:41

RobertDyck,

President Trump is far from the only person here in America who thinks the way he does, FYI. If he wins a second term, the world could be a very different place, better in some ways, especially for Americans, but worse in others, particularly for our allies who don't spend what they agreed to spend on their own defense. Our message has been delivered, even if its recipients don't want to hear it.

EU military spending will reach a record 270 billion euros ($295 billion) in 2023 in the face of Russia's war on Ukraine, the bloc's chief Charles Michel said on Thursday.

2023 GDP and Defense Spending Numbers
EU: $26.64T; $295B
UK: $3.87T; $8.5B
CA: $2.38T; $26.5B
US: $27.97T; $857.9B

EU / UK / Canada military aid to Ukraine: $25B
US military aid to Ukraine: $200B

Is expecting Europeans to start putting their money where their mouth is, a bridge too far?

Poland, Finland, the UK, Australia, and a handful of other nations can see the writing on the wall.

2% of Canada's GDP: $47.58B

What will Canada actually spend?

DND's Main Estimates 2023-24 are $26.5 billion, comprised of various votes as well as statutory funding (mainly comprised of funding related to employee benefit plans totalling approximately $1.7 billion).

That's about 1% of Canada's GDP.

In 2023, Canada produces 3,000 of the 155 millimetre artillery shells per month under a framework called the Munitions Supply Program.

How does that compare with what fewer than 1/3rd as many Canadians contributed during WWII?

On June 12, 1943, the Globe and Mail printed a chart showing one week’s production from Canada’s factories. Each week, the newspaper noted, 900,000 Canadian workers, men and women, made at least six vessels, 80 aircraft, 4000 motor vehicles, 450 armoured fighting vehicles, 940 heavy guns, 13,000 smaller weapons, 525,000 artillery shells, 25 million cartridges, 10,000 tons of explosives, and at least $4 million dollars worth of instruments and communications equipment. It was not until 1944 that Canada reached its peaks in production, so there was more to come. That almost none of these weapons, ammunition, and equipment had been produced in Canada in 1939— that very few in fact were even capable of being produced--is an indication of just how effective Canada’s wartime industrial mobilization had been.

Canada made 525,000 artillery shells PER WEEK during 1943, which was not peak production for Canada, but now you can only contribute 36,000 shells per year. Canada did all that in 1943 with only 11 million people, and no computerized anything to speed up manufacture. Now Canada has 38 million people and computerized manufacturing equipment.

Assuming we don't immediately get our butts handed to us, this coming world war will become another 5+ year affair, just like the last one was, with the same end result- tens of millions of additional people who will be maimed for life or killed before the current batch of dictators figure out that they can't win.

Perhaps Putin and Xinping know their target audience better than America does, and Europeans and Asians are all too willing to live under Russian and Chinese dictatorship?

America is about to become engaged in the Pacific Theater once again. War is coming. Prepare now. Fair warning has been given.

RobertDyck · 2024-02-24 21:54:31

I told members of this forum to reduce America's budget to the year 2000 budget plus inflation. Actually I would like a further 10% cut. Don't blame allies for the fact America spent too much.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address (1961) warned of the military industrial complex. Large corporations demanding the government give them money for weapons just to line their profit margins.

Canada tried to maintain a strong military presence after World War 2, but the US government didn't like it. Canada built the Chalk River Nuclear Research Facility as part of the Manhattan Project. It was capable of manufacturing nuclear weapons. But the US didn't like that, wanted control of nuclear weapons, so insisted Canada not make any on its own. The US demanded the only nuclear weapons Canada possessed must be purchased from the US. In the 1950s Canada developed the Avro Arrow, an interceptor purpose built to shoot down Russian T-95 Bear bombers. It was the best, most advanced fighter jet of its time. Sure the F-22 can do everything the Arrow could, but the F-22 first flew in 1997, formally went into service in 2005. The Arrow mark 1 was test flown in 1958, mark 2 was ready in 1959. It was supposed to enter service in 1963. The reason Arrow was cancelled was the US government coerced all NATO allies to not purchase it. Canada couldn't afford a world leading fighter without allies buying it. So don't undermine Canada's military then complain Canada doesn't spend enough.

RobertDyck · 2024-02-24 22:10:13

kbd512 wrote:

America is about to become engaged in the Pacific Theater once again. War is coming. Prepare now. Fair warning has been given.

And that's part of your problem. NO YOU AREN'T! China will NOT attack! China's economy is dependent on selling goods to the US. To western countries in general, but mostly to the US. They have no motivation to go to war with you. And they aren't anywhere near ready to fight. Too much internal corruption selling off or consuming military equipment and supplies.

You focus is the wrong place. Focus on defeating Russia in Ukraine now. If you do nothing and let Russia win, that will embolden every disctator in the world.

Video of the Hamas attack already shows someone speaking Russian, leading one of the raids. Russia manipulated Hamas to create a major distribution. And it worked, the US focused on that, distracted from Ukraine. China is not going to attack. Anything other than Ukraine is a distraction. And while you're distracted, you let Russia win. If they do win, all these phantoms become reality. If you defeat Russia now, all the others will never happen.

kbd512 · 2024-02-25 01:20:05

RobertDyck,

China has a publicly released year end address from President Xi Xinping and a policy paper stating that they're going to "re-unify" Taiwan on or before 2027. In point of fact, President Xinping has said the same thing publicly more than once now. What would you like to wager that he's not joking?

Xi Jinping promises the 'complete reunification' of China and Taiwan in year-end address

Chinese leader Xi Jinping promised the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China during his year-end address on Sunday.
Tensions between China and Taiwan remain high, and Taiwanese voters are set to participate in the island’s elections on Jan. 13. Xi has repeatedly affirmed China’s stance that Taiwan is a part of China and that it must be reunified, by force if necessary.
“All Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Xi said in Sunday’s address.
The speech was the second time in a matter of days that Xi addressed the Taiwan issue. Xi also vowed to reunify Taiwan on Tuesday during a symposium in Beijing commemorating the 130th anniversary of the birth of Mao Zedong, the founding father of Communist China.
“The complete reunification of the motherland is an irresistible trend,” Xi said at the event, adding that China would “resolutely prevent anyone from splitting” the two sides.
Meanwhile, in Taiwan, residents are preparing to head for the polls. Current opinion polls show residents favoring independence-leaning candidate Lai Ching-te.
Xi Jinping reiterates that China and Taiwan must be “re-unified,” even if that means using the military to do so.
China has bristled at any international indication of Taiwan’s independence. Xi’s military conducted weeks of live-fire exercises around the Island in 2022 after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., traveled there.
Taiwan split from mainland China in 1949, when democratic forces fled there after losing a civil war against the Chinese Communist Party.

You sound like the French. They told Ukraine that Russia wasn't going to invade. How did that work out?

kbd512 · 2024-02-25 03:02:21

RobertDyck wrote:

I told members of this forum to reduce America's budget to the year 2000 budget plus inflation. Actually I would like a further 10% cut. Don't blame allies for the fact America spent too much.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address (1961) warned of the military industrial complex. Large corporations demanding the government give them money for weapons just to line their profit margins.
Canada tried to maintain a strong military presence after World War 2, but the US government didn't like it. Canada built the Chalk River Nuclear Research Facility as part of the Manhattan Project. It was capable of manufacturing nuclear weapons. But the US didn't like that, wanted control of nuclear weapons, so insisted Canada not make any on its own. The US demanded the only nuclear weapons Canada possessed must be purchased from the US. In the 1950s Canada developed the Avro Arrow, an interceptor purpose built to shoot down Russian T-95 Bear bombers. It was the best, most advanced fighter jet of its time. Sure the F-22 can do everything the Arrow could, but the F-22 first flew in 1997, formally went into service in 2005. The Arrow mark 1 was test flown in 1958, mark 2 was ready in 1959. It was supposed to enter service in 1963. The reason Arrow was cancelled was the US government coerced all NATO allies to not purchase it. Canada couldn't afford a world leading fighter without allies buying it. So don't undermine Canada's military then complain Canada doesn't spend enough.

RobertDyck,

America used American Uranium and American facilities to build the bomb because they were completely paranoid about Germany building the bomb before we did. That had nothing to do with America undermining Canada, and it happened before we were born, so there's really nothing we can do about it, unless you have a time machine. The same applies to the Arrow. It was cancelled by Canada's government, not America's government, 65 years ago.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/ … avro-arrow

...
Notions that the US government pressured Diefenbaker to cancel the Arrow (in an effort to eliminate a competitor of the American industry) appear to be more myth than history. Documents from 1958 even suggest that United States Air Force officers wanted to buy Arrows on behalf of the RCAF as part of a continental defence strategy. Taking this as an act of charity, Canada refused. “There’s no doubt that the American aircraft industry would have been exceedingly unhappy if the [United States] had bought aircraft from Canada,” said historian Jack Granatstein, “but to say that the Americans killed [the Arrow] is, I think, simply not true.”
Around the time the Arrow was cancelled, British officials requested the use of one or more of the jets for flight testing. The request was soon withdrawn, allegedly on the recommendation of the Canadian government. In a 1980 interview with the CBC, Arrow test pilot and native Briton Peter Cope suggested that Diefenbaker had not wanted Great Britain to realize that Canada had abandoned such a high-performing plane.
A.V. Roe tried desperately to find a foreign buyer for the Arrow. However, Canada’s political climate, combined with the project’s cost and narrow approach to warfare, left few options. Most countries did not want to take on such an ambitious project, especially given the Arrow’s limited use in the space age. And while fans of the Arrow have since demonized the Diefenbaker government for ending the project, some historians think that the Liberals would have done the same.
...

This is another convenient lie you tell yourself, because it agrees with your foolish pride and utter lack of an explanation that holds water for what your government is doing now. The truth of the matter is that American military officers in the US Air Force were perfectly willing to purchase fighters either from, or at least for, Canada. Unfortunately, the Canadians wouldn't sell them any, due to an apparent massive ego problem. They wouldn't even allow the British to test them.

There was a ridiculous pissing contest between the head of Avro and the head of the Canadian government. Avro fought the government, or at least the man in charge of it, and the government won. That sounds a lot more like real history than a grand American conspiracy to prevent Avro from selling aircraft to anyone in NATO. Granted, it's not as fun as blaming America for something Canadians did to themselves, because the story would be rather boring.

The most probable role that America played was only as an interested bystander to this entire affair, and only wanted North American airspace defended by something approximating a credible threat to Russian bombers. We didn't particularly care if it was the Arrow or Bomarc, so long as we had something.

Bomarc, incidentally, had a greater range than the Arrow had with its lower thrust engines, and flew at a faster speed to its target. Whereas the Arrow was still undergoing testing, Bomarc was already operational in 1959. Our F-106 was also operational in 1959, it flew faster than Mach 2, and had a greater range than the Arrow on internal fuel. We never built many F-106s or spent a lot of money on upgrades, because they were the last purpose-built interceptor design we created.

That brings us back to today and back to reality.

Your government doesn't meet its defense spending obligations, so America spends more to make up for the fact that so few of our NATO allies meet their defense spending obligations.

RobertDyck · 2024-02-25 05:40:12

kbd512

And you have a distorted and simplistic view of history. The Avro Arrow was approved under the Liberal government of the 1950s. Avro received funding from the Canadian government. And the business model was dependent on selling to NATO allies including the US. But the US government under John F Kennedy didn't want Canada to build the best fighter jet in the world. One excuse was the Arrow could shoot down a U2 spy plane when no other fighter in the world could. Of course the Soviet Union developed a surface-to-air missile to shoot down the U2, as Gary Powers discovered the hard way, they didn't need to steal secrets from Canada. The US refused to buy the Arrows and pressured other NATO countries to not buy it. France places an order for Iroquois jet engines that they intended to install in their Mirage fighters. But Canada couldn't make any other sales sue to American interference. Once this happened the Conservative Party campaigned in an election that the Arrow was a rediculous and unjustified expense. Well it wouldn't have been if Canada could have made some sales. Once the Conservative Party was elected, their leader had a passionate hatred of the Arrow for partisan reasons. The Conservativea would have had to find some other issue to campaign on it sales of Avro Arrow were made. The Conservatives probably would have lost that election. So don't lecture me about a disagreement between the head of Avro and the Conservative Prime Minister.

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