Sunday, January 15, 2017

Pink Brings Us the World's Best-Selling Submarines

America and Russia likely make the best nuclear submarines in the world but they can't sell them because they cost billions and neither country wants to risk their precious secrets which the other side probably knows anyway.

Germany came up with a smaller submarine which runs on hydrogen fuel cells and they're as quiet or more so compared to the American / Russian subs.  It gets better since these subs don't have the capability for the extreme depths the expensive subs can reach but they're excellent down to about twelve hundred feet and they're particularly good in relatively-shallow water.

The German subs sell like mad and many of the countries in Europe are using them, either manufactured by Germany or manufactured under license from them.  (National Interest:  Did Germany Make America and Russia's Nuclear Attack Submarines Obsolete?)




Maybe you have read of the US Navy littoral ship program and these are ships designed for operations in shallow waters.  Of at least four built recently, all of them broke down.  The same is true for the new Zumwalt since it ran into difficulties when it had to deal with heavy seas and it recently broke down somewhere around the Panama Canal.  Based on that evidence, we will buy our sub from Europe since American ship-building gives us no confidence.  If they ever have a go at building a cruise ship, it will probably sink.

Ed:  American subs are highly safe!

Yah, they got it right with SUBSAFE after Thresher but here's a tip:  America still has no chance of selling them.  They're just isn't that much market for a submarine which can carry enough weapons to destroy an entire country.  (WIKI:  USS Thresher (SSN-593))


As to whether this German design has the punch to do any real damage, they can pack submarine-killer torpedoes and the big country-killing subs can lurk down deep all they like but they have to come up to launch and that's when hordes of these smaller subs can take them apart.

That pitch about obsolescence seems like click bait at the top but it may not be so far off the mark.  We have seen already the Pentagon couldn't find a clue even if they traded all their baseball cards for it but those wacky Germans have turned out to be some real entrepreneurs in sub sales.

By the way, the German sub costs less than $500 million.  That's cheap so buy two ... or more.


Note:  Pink knows submarines.  There's a whole lot he's not permitted to tell us but he definitely knows the material.

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