Germany industrial capacity was superior to France's they also had a big population and unparalleled military traditions. And it was another time too.
Britain had unparalleled military traditions and was literally the first nation to industrialize, having the deepest industrial traditions. Didn't mean shit because they didn't start their preparations earlier, because as it happens, time is important.
Other countries have icebreakers if you need them now, and building a ship doesn't take ten years. I just gave a look and it took six years to the soviet to build one from start to finish (the Yamal) during the collapse. There is nothing Russia can do that NATO shouldn't be able to do better and faster.
The icebreaker gap is also exposing some deeper problems that speak to the long neglect of the issue. Not only are they expensive, costing at least $1 billion each, but it would take the U.S. shipbuilding industry – which has long ceased to build icebreakers -- at least ten years to build a brand new one.
And it’s unclear who would pay for the next generation. Icebreakers are operated by the Coast Guard, but their cost falls way outside the reach of its budget. Funding them, said Zukunft, is the “billion-dollar question.”
At its height, the U.S. icebreaker fleet hovered around eight ships, comparable to that of other Arctic countries like Canada, Finland and Sweden. But the Coast Guard’s robust fleet dropped out of commission one by one, and today consists of one 40-year-old heavy icebreaker, the Polar Star, commissioned in 1976, and one medium icebreaker, the Healy, commissioned in 2000. The Polar Star’s sister ship, the Polar Sea, has been sitting in a drydock in Seattle since its engine failed in 2010.
The ships require thick steel, reinforced hulls and enormous horsepower to ram through ice. Icebreakers also have special onboard tanks and pumps that shift water from one side of the boat, rocking it to break the surrounding ice. The Coast Guard’s total budget request for fiscal 2016 is $9.96 billion; a single icebreaker would eat a tenth of the budget.
Zukunft said in order to get funding for icebreakers outside of the Coast Guard budget, the vessels would need to be seen as national assets—in the same light as aircraft carriers and nuclear ballistic submarines. “At the end of the day it really is a national asset, where it’s not just Coast Guard, it’s the National Science Foundation, the Arctic Research Council, the Department of the Interior, Transportation, Defense Department, Commerce, a number of others, that have equities in heavy icebreakers,” he said.
Alaskan senator Lisa Murkowski, who’s led the charge for new icebreakers for years, wants to see the Navy and Coast Guard partner to fund the ships. “Do you know how many naval ships we are building? A lot,” she said. “Do you know how many icebreakers we are building? None.”
But even if funding to build new icebreakers came tomorrow, it would still take too long to build one ship, analysts say. Current law requires Coast Guard vessels to be constructed in U.S. shipyards unless the President determines there’s an overriding national-security interest to build a ship outside of the U.S.
Taking it for granted that you're better than your opponents is how you find out rudely one day,
you're not. The USA has numerous hurdles to cross to get a functional icebreaking fleet whilst Russia is the only nation in the world that has nuclear icebreakers. There is a considerable gap here, and a quarter of the world's gas and oil is at stake
Yeah, we'll see if you don't end the year in a civil war...
Years since last civil war:
151
America is pretty safe. The only people who'd start a civil war right now in the USA are a disarmed populace, so the doom and gloom isn't warranted.
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Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0 (Read 1412589 times)