AdamB wrote:
Can it be manufactured by countries with citizens so limited in their intellectual and manufacturing capability that they can't build automobiles for their people? And when America builds state of the art, top notch and mostly incomparable to anything else in the world military hardware, it doesn't tend to worry about cost.
Countries that export large amounts of natural resources have difficulty maintaining a manufacturing sector -- it's cheaper to import manufactured goods because the natural resource exports push up the value of the currency. Interestingly, Australia was planning to build French designed nuclear submarines, changed the plan to build cheaper conventional submarines and finally dropped the idea of building any submarines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack-class_submarine
The US has the advantage of maintaining a permanent naval warship construction capability. In Canada warships are constructed on a very irregular basis so the knowledge and infrastructure to build them has to be reacquired each time we start the cycle again. The political requirement to build new ships in Canada results in horrendously high costs compared to countries like the US. I would expect Australia to have the same problem if they had proceeded with a project to build submarines.
AdamB wrote:Yellowcanoe wrote:
Some AIP systems such as fuel cell based units can provide quieter operation than a nuclear submarine which requires pumps in the reactor system to operate all the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-indep ... propulsion
Yup. I watched a story about some Scandavanian sub captain in war games against a US carrier task force that was able to penetrate its sub screen and score hits on the carrier, a non-nuke boat. There are alternatives out there, are you aware of any with the kind of global reach nuke boats have?
And if it isn't rude, is there a significance to your username? Just curious.
I don't see any alternative to nuclear for global reach. I would also suggest that the US and Canada should be acquiring nuclear powered icebreakers just as russia has been doing for quite a long time. Given the power requirement to punch through thick ice, nuclear is clearly better than fossil fueled and eliminates the potential need to be refueled in a remote Arctic/Antarctic location.
Yellowcanoe is a reference to my yellow coloured solo canoe.