China’s rise, and her increasingly aggressive maritime focus gathers all the press these days. About the only other naval news of interest is the gutting of the Royal Navy. It’s easy to forget that there are other naval powers who retain a keen interest in the maneuver space of the sea.
Ecce: An interesting article in Novosti on the issues the Russian Navy faces modernizing their platforms to their mission requirements:
Russia has already made some sensible decisions on upgrading its fleet. Suffice it to mention the cautious approach to new heavy warships, the rapid construction of medium-class ships for the Russian Navy on the basis of worked-out export projects and the long-awaited unification of naval armaments.
It seems that the Navy’s leadership understands what needs to be done. Now it will have to decide how to do it. It should start by adjusting the defense order system so as to make pricing transparent and to guarantee strict quality control for supplied arms and equipment.
If they can figure out how to do that, I wonder if they’ll let us see their notes?
Cap’n, you do know just where to insert the knife, and twist it, don’t you?
No longer communist, open to common sense.
They made a movie about that, GPB, it’s called “Trading Places”..
More true than funny, alas….
One would think that, as fond of Keynesian “pump-priming” as this administration is, and equally as depending upon union votes as the Senate and President are, we’d see a naval build-up as central to their plans.
From a Keynesian point of view, ships are the perfect vehicle. They take a shipyard full of union workers and give them work for a year or more, the suppliers include steel mills and copper mills and hence miners and steelworkers, we have electrical and plumbing and steam-fitters and all sorts of other contractors in on the deal, and the money circulates through all of them right down to the guy running the taco truck outside the main gate.
From an economic standpoint, it makes more sense to build a ship or a bridge or a stadium than it does to hand out unemployment checks or give out food stamps or otherwise give direct monies that will be spent once or twice in the local economy.
And with ships we protect and maintain lines of commerce, with which we can trade. Free-market folks are all about trade, so they should be on board too.
It actually makes so much sense, it’s almost no wonder Congress and the Executive have failed to consider it.
– Max
Max – See NavSea PAO for a job.
Ivan never really was Communist as Communism is quite impossible. Fascist is a much description of what they were.
The precise vocabulary for describing the three quarters of a century that the Bolsheviks; then Stalin; then the Nomenclatura; and finally the reformers misruled and murdered the people of the Russian empire of the Czars and nations conquered by main force and subversion is unclear, but so is the precise meaning of “communism”.
Murdering and torturing to enforce the achievement of a political system based on hope and change for social justice under tyrannical rule is a really bad idea, given that the world and the human heart do not function the way the postulates the whole ugly business is based upon stipulate.
Permanently Revolutionary Socialist Dictatorship of Institutionalized Bureaucratic Terror seems apt, if awkward.
Good thing Reagan got elected…we won, they lost. Thank God.
Too bad some folks are all nostalgic for what never was or could be. The burnt fool’s bamdaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire…
Well, if we are to believe the hype that the `united states of Europe` will step up in times of crisis, does this mean the French will sell us Exocets if Argentina decides it wants the Falklands again? Or will they just continue to sell brimstone to the devil?
Store’s open, all items priced as marked. Cash only, you break it – you own it.
Well, I think you can count on Obama to betray you in the Falklands if push comes to shove. The US under Reagan was kinda mealy mouthed a well. Given the behavior of the Argies under the Junta, I don’t understand why Reagan’s minions didn’t support Maggie on that one. Particularly since the loss brought down the Junta.
I don’t know what France would do, but if I were the UK, I’d get out of AFG and start to rebuild the UK armed Forces and hope I had enough time to do it. Maybe the Football hooligans will wake up, but I don’t think that’s the way to bet.
Maybe you can get some help from Oz.
So I throw the title of this post into the good old Russian to English translator, thinking i’d find one of our Humble Hosts pithy and humorous offerings, and found it says, “The Navy of Russia.” But it looks cool and somewhat evil in the cyrillic.
Военно-Морской Флот России )) looks good here
You’re reading Russian papers )