this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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Chapotraphouse

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[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 48 points 5 months ago (1 children)

this is why you don't have healthcare (if you live in this shit country)

[–] Lussy@hexbear.net 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Also, does anyone in charge of spending at the Pentagon actually have regret buying the expensive junk they’re given by their MIC ‘bros’

[–] john_brown@hexbear.net 26 points 5 months ago

Absolutely not, they are trying to pave their way into no-show board seats at the MIC corporations when they retire. That's how this whole thing works.

[–] WafflesTasteGood@hexbear.net 37 points 5 months ago

They keep running out of $40,000 bolts and its a 6 month backorder.

[–] BobDole@hexbear.net 35 points 5 months ago (2 children)

They haven’t even finished laying the keel in five years? China would have a whole fleet of them by now.

[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 32 points 5 months ago (2 children)

if China were even a quarter as imperialist as western nerds would believe they'd be pumping out aircraft carriers and shit right now but huh, would you look at that, their manufacturing focus seems to be on solar power and high speed trains and increased connectivity with neighbors and important markets

[–] SkeletorJesus@hexbear.net 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

IIRC, China has something like 80+ times the shipbuilding capacity of the US. Towards the end of WW2 when the US was kicking the shit out of Japan and obliterating their production capacity, they had something around 9 times the capacity. China's just using it mostly to build container ships, but if they wanted to make carriers (though I have heard people smarter than me say carriers aren't as important as they used to be) they absolutely could. It wouldn't be 100% straightforward because obviously container ships are pretty simple, but it'd be a hell of a lot less of a problem than it would be for the US to spool up production.

[–] Biggay@hexbear.net 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Carrier doctrine isnt as firmly rooted like the rest of warfare because any near peer conflict we've seen has relied extensively on smarter smaller weapons systems. Outside of very pricey stealth fighters/bombers, missiles and drones seem to be where the utility of warfare is bleeding towards. What good is a carrier when a smart naval mine/torpedo planted on the sea floor months beforehand can sink it before it can even react?

[–] SkeletorJesus@hexbear.net 3 points 5 months ago

Yeah, seems reasonable to me. Sort of like the Spanish Armada, a bigass boat can be a double edged sword.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Because soft power is more important, and in a shooting war, everyone loses.

[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 8 points 5 months ago

in a shooting war the u.s. loses, the only way "everyone" loses is if they nuke everyone to death

[–] goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 5 months ago

I read it as they've spent that much and still don't have the design finished.

[–] CyborgMarx@hexbear.net 31 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The acid of neoliberal grift and private contracting has eaten into the bedrock of the American empire and there can't be any internal opposition despite the obvious catastrophic results

Because genuine opposition and pushback would necessarily have to involve a Marxist analysis of the conditions affecting the military and that's unthinkable as long as such analysis threatens the pockets of the biggest contractors

This empire is finished

[–] SerialExperimentsGay@hexbear.net 10 points 5 months ago

something something system collapsing under its internal contradictions

[–] NeelixBiederman@hexbear.net 27 points 5 months ago

As a naval design engineer consultant and parts logistician, me and my retirement account think the system is working just fine.

[–] glimmer_twin@hexbear.net 26 points 5 months ago

When you’re definitely gonna beat China in wwiii

[–] FnordPrefect@hexbear.net 25 points 5 months ago

"No no no, it's supposed to be like that! It's the USS Constellation and is a ship the same way that Aries is a ram!"

[–] aanes_appreciator@hexbear.net 25 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I sure do enjoy when the product managers and design team start making edits to the project spec while it's mid-implementation.

I sure hope the US navy enjoys it too.

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 16 points 5 months ago

The Germans did this with Tiger tanks, which made all the problems with the Tiger worse. It's bad enough they have to be sent places on trains because their transmissions crap out after 45 miles. But then they have to be sent back to their original factory to be repaired because none of the parts are standardized due to specs changing multiple times per day? lol. lmao, even.

[–] Evilphd666@hexbear.net 16 points 5 months ago

The shareholders sure do and that's all that matters. stonks-up

[–] BobDole@hexbear.net 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I implore Hexbear users to watch The Pentagon Wars. It’s the most accurate portrayal of defense acquisitions ever made (the specifics of the Bradley acquisition aren’t 100% accurate, as reddit nerds always point out, but the overall tale is the tale of every program)

[–] peeonyou@hexbear.net 3 points 5 months ago

downloading rn

[–] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 11 points 5 months ago

I'm having to deal with this at work. A $100M infrastructure build out that has been designed out and engineered to be built using simple technology, but a new CTO at the company has decided that this specific brand of untested tech is a better deal and in the process has scuttled 2 years of training in design, permit, and construction as well as blown up over half of all existing automated design workflows.

The kicker is that when I did a test design, the overall linear foot cost increased.

[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

lmao it's just a frigate too

the Chinese would never

[–] SacredExcrement@hexbear.net 10 points 5 months ago

Sometimes it just takes 10 years and 40 trillion to build a fishing ship

[–] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Huh

All the ads I see at the gym about signing up to build submarines gave me the impression they were going to get serious about naval construction

[–] Posadas@hexbear.net 20 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

damn, better pay them more

[–] spudnik@hexbear.net 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

brrrrrrrrrrrr but it feeds directly into a furnace

[–] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

what font do you use for these?

[–] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Just don’t ask why FlakesBongler was seen driving around with an enormous butterfly net the day Matt Groening disappeared

[–] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 6 points 5 months ago

Hey, he said I could pull on his beard for good luck

He never said I couldn't pull it whenever I wanted

[–] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 7 points 5 months ago

I just use www.frinkiac.com to grab stills (or gifs) and MS Paint to do any editing

I am a simple person

[–] regul@hexbear.net 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How many ships do you figure the US built in one month during WW2?

[–] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 21 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

If you include those haulers that stayed in service for way too long, it was nearing a hundred.

They were making almost 60 Liberty Ships a month at the peak. Something like 40 days for a whole ship to be built in a single drydock. With 18 shipyards running multiple drydocks each building them.

[–] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It’s a mind blowing figure. The raw tonnage of something innocuous like burlap to make into sandbags between 1942-1945 breaks my brain. Sometimes when I want to feel a glimmer of hope I look at that kind of production and say “yeah, we can totally meet the challenges of climate change, humans move literal mountains when we work together.”

[–] CTHlurker@hexbear.net 10 points 5 months ago

The bad news is that this level of industrial production was entirely possible because a bunch of factories had been dormant but not demolished for at most a decade due to the depression. The current level of production that would theoretically be possible would be a mere fraction of what was done in 1942-1945.

[–] crazycraw@crazypeople.online 18 points 5 months ago

the navy has been over charging and under delivering for decades. this is just a small example of where the black projects get their off-the-books funding.

foxtrot tengo november

[–] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 14 points 5 months ago

“Due to budget windfalls the project is on track to be delivered behind schedule.”

Pentagon Wars was a documentary

[–] GenderIsOpSec@hexbear.net 6 points 5 months ago

they could make those boats faster but how would they grift for more money?