{"id":45170,"date":"2019-02-01T11:04:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T00:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=45170"},"modified":"2019-02-01T11:05:37","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T00:05:37","slug":"dont-miss-the-forest-for-the-trees-part-2-critical-mass-for-continuous-shipbuilding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/dont-miss-the-forest-for-the-trees-part-2-critical-mass-for-continuous-shipbuilding\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t miss the forest for the trees (part\u00a02): critical mass for continuous shipbuilding"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My previous post<\/a> looked at the greater value for money Australia will derive from the program of continuous warship design and construction it is commencing compared with the stop\u2013start method of the past. This part examines the concept of critical mass in continuous shipbuilding.<\/p>\n

Nations with large economies and large navies, such as the United States and China, have sufficient critical mass for continuous design and construction programs. By contrast, smaller nations such as Pacific island states or even New Zealand are too small (both as economies and as navies) to have sufficient critical mass to justify a continuous program. What, then, is the threshold, the critical mass, at which a continuous production program is likely to provide value for money and how can it be calculated?<\/p>\n

One way to identify the critical mass is to look at the size of a nation\u2019s economy and the size of the part of the navy it intends to support through continuous production. A larger economy and a larger fleet size would tend to support the conclusion that a continuous program is value for money. This methodology is both quantitative and qualitative because it acknowledges the agency of sovereign governments in making decisions according to differing strategic circumstances and doesn\u2019t propose that there\u2019s necessarily a direct relationship between economic and fleet size, on the one hand, and the viability of a continuous shipbuilding program on the other.<\/p>\n

Why the choice of these two metrics? The size of the economy is an important consideration for two reasons. First, a country\u2019s economy needs to be of a sufficient size for shipbuilding to be sustainable without unreasonably constraining other productive activities. Second, a country that meets this criterion is likely to have the diversity and depth of productive capacity to support the manufacture of a modern warship. The size of a country\u2019s fleet is important because it gives an idea of its demand for warships. Production of a new ship every two years is about the minimum rate required to efficiently occupy a shipyard which could support a fleet of 10 vessels with a service life of 20 years.<\/p>\n

The chart below lists the top 20 nations by gross domestic product on the x-axis and a measure of fleet size on the y-axis. The bars are coloured according to whether they have or are aspiring to a domestic continuous shipbuilding program (note that this includes commercial and not just naval shipbuilding)\u2014blue for those with or aspiring to a continuous program and red without. The measure of fleet size is the sum of medium to large surface combatants (cruisers, destroyers, frigates or similar with a minimum displacement of 2,000 tonnes) and ballistic missile or attack submarines. Wikipedia entries as of July 2018 for each navy were used as the source for number and size of platforms. (Wikipedia was chosen because it is unclassified, is widely available and has a robust and well-understood methodology.)<\/p>\n

The general trend of fleet size decreasing in line with the size of the economy is reasonably clear, as is the tendency for larger nations with larger fleets to be constantly engaged in some form of shipbuilding, even if that is spread across numerous types and classes of vessel. There are some clear outliers to the general trend:<\/p>\n