Comments by "Comm0ut" (@Comm0ut) on "What's Going on With Shipping?" channel.

  1. A skilled educator can make any subject interesting. Sal on point as usual and each video is a useful lesson.
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  2. Nice to see India understand it needs to be a MARITIME power despite its large land mass. India would benefit by developing a strong shipbuilding industry to compete with it's geopolitical rivals. BTW is harboring a vessel stolen by pirates an act of war? Somalian government de-facto suppor of piracy should be actionable, not that there is much to do to a permanently failed state other than gunboat diplomacy.
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  3. The purpose of the mission is a political gesture, but also useful to highlight lack of US naval preparedness. Efficiency is completely secondary. Washington is pretending to care about Palestinians to offer plausible deniability to our frenemies (who don't care about them either and certainly aren't insane enough to import them). The show of expensive activity will likely serve its purpose. Meanwhile Israel can finish its punitive constabulary mission in Rafah. The important part from a US military perspective is to show (the public feel, they do not think) US capability is constrained by decades of neglect and that our Navy desperately needs a collective overhaul before war breaks out over Taiwan. Beijing is watching and will see how UNprepared the US is even for a small feelgood mission. The CCP will watch and learn.
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  4. Europe can afford to have naval power projection and is immensely wealthier than it was during the early Cold War. Vacation time is over.
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  5. Most import consumption is trifling waste in the first place so the less of it one buys the more money available for useful things. Imports mostly fund ENEMY societies like mainland China so the less the better.
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  6. Any geographic/strategic choke point is inherently a liability. The Canal is now a more costly obstacle.
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  7. To be realistic all interceptions to to a black market is make the surviving shipments more profitable, the reason no version of "prohibition" works in practice. Demand reduction is much more complex so many nations, especially those preferring punitive methods on ideological principle, will never use them. Capitalism is adaptable and when one chemical is less available something else, often worse, replaces it.
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  8. Containers leave time to abandon ship. I'd rather see than than be on an LNG tanker afire in the middle of the ocean.
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  9. How common IS maritime incompetence? Are there any notably bad carriers?
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  10. Densely storing vehicles is generally a bad idea but desperation is the mother of invention.
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  11. Which is more abundant, competence or stupidity?
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  12. Vehicles make for impressive fires even without battery or fuel tank! I worked salvage long ago in the cutting torch era in Jersey City and if spatter ignited an interior there was much entertainment, especially if it lit off after the hull was deep in a horizontal stack (think "dominos"). Vehicles are basically built to burn.
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  13. The corsairs attacked US flagged vessels. Not a US vessel? Not our problem. Companies which flag their vessels with joke third world nations to avoid paying taxes deserve to lose their ships. The US is the US business, not parasitic foreign flagged shipping companies.
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  14.  @CraigTheBrute-yf7no  Russian shill bringing irrelevant events in to chitpost detected.
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  15.  @durgan5668  The point was to get one over, not drive it. The usual "Lemon Lot" cars swapped between G.I.s for many tours handled most of that. In the 1980s some bases had their own small salvage yards (just a parking area) where G.I.s could harvest parts for free. A nice arrangement all around. Of course German standards are geared to coerce car replacement so a bit of otherwise irrelevant rust served that bureaucratic purpose, and AAFES sold many new rides in Europe or delivered in CONUS.
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  16. That ship wasn't Israeli.
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  17.  @Colinpark  Which makes it more than worth it since a mere training exercise would be ignored. Never forget for a second most people are completely incapable of understanding anything but drama. Intelligence is neuro-divergent so emotions must be used to guide human processes.
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  18. Artificialy reefs are wonderful for aquatic growth and fishery support. It had its day but in 2024 it's nothing but scrap shaped like a ship. Now it can entertain (its purpose was to entertain passengers after all) divers for hundreds of years.
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  19. Worse than my ex-mother-in-law on a hot day.
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  20. Europe should be restoring its navies to Cold War levels. Order requires control of the sea which like everything else Europe supposedly values was neglected to save money. This is primarily a European and Asian problem because the US does not depend on this trade for national survival (economic disruptions would provoke all the right things like insourcing and new trading partners perhaps in the undeveloped parts of the Americas). Europe and Asia should pay to solve it.
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  21.  @ryelor123  That presumes the cargo will liquify and escape quickly enough to pose a problem.
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  22. Define "worked" as the issues in play are very complex.
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  23. Sounds like the US needs to REinvest in (grossly) neglected capabilities preferably before our forces lose blood, treasure and quite possibly battles due to political leadership neglect (including everyone who declines to make a stink for career reasons!). Question for Sal, what would you like to see their REPLACEMENTS incorporate? That speed alone is a liability sailing against opposition. Being three vessels deep in a key capability is not a good look. How many and what configuration (to be loss tolerant) should the US consider? We cannot expect not to lose vessels. The post-WWII honeymoon ended with the cheap missile and drone age for which our most likely opponent builds many of the parts. (Fun fact, the US trade deficit with the country owned by the CCP is vastly greater than their entire war budget.)
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  24. Anyone who failed to convert away from home heating oil DECADES ago had it coming. The OPEC crisis should have been a hint and that was half a century ago.
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  25. All complex systems operate at some level of dysfunction. Inspection and maintenance are easy and tempting for unprofessional management to ignore, even basic work if there aren't enough personnel who know how to do it right and/or specialty parts, tools and equipment. 2025 is a long way from 1991 when the USSR dissolved by mutual consent after the Warsaw Pact voluntarily dissolved. Without an empire to serve it (including the industrial might of Ukraine) and looted by its own leadership, funding and human resources have been severely constrained since. Mansions in London don't buy themselves. A senior technician of 1991 is an old man or deceased in 2025. Complex system operation and maintenance has many aspects not taught in books, especially how to keep systems going without ideal support. Not everyone can SAFELY bodge tired systems to get more use from them. Learning those skills is based on experience and mentoring. (That's also why defense industries like shipbuilding take many years to reconstitute to high quality performance levels.)
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  26. They would lose. The Egyptian military is a jobs program, a business and a way to control the Egyptian people. Egypt has no external enemies that matter. Egypt has no power projection, no suitable logistics, and the distance is much too far.
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  27. The brass have exactly what they enabled.
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  28.  @CHMichael  Those were mostly minor constabulary wars of choice in strategically irrelevant backwaters. The US has had zero peer or neer peer opponents but we're prone to leadership failures both political and military which lead to unwinnable conflicts or Pyrrhic victories of zero value to our public.
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  29.  @ssl3546  Technicality is one thing, but reasonable presumption based on reality is another. The fix is legislation banning ALL alcohol consumption after an incident UNTIL the person has been tested. Being a drunk is a choice not a need and there is no excuse for wanting booze shortly after an incident except to conceal prior booze consumption. Humans are a scurvy lot who must be monitored and credibly threatened with harsh punishment to keep malefactors in line. That has never been different nor can it be. Trust but verify and leave no place to hide.
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  30. With whose donations? Other museum ships go begging for donations as it is and every addition thins the donor pool further. How much are YOU prepared to donate? How much have YOU donated to other museum ships? People love spending other peoples money. It's just a relic, that era is dead and gone, and the remaining people who remember it will be likewise in the next couple decades. Ship preservation is staggeringly expensive. Now the sea will be its grave and divers can amuse themselves while marine life and fish thrive in their new artificial reef.
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  31. Internet banking is adorable but I keep cash and paper checks because I predate the craving for convenience. I also use online services but those are compartmented (no debit cards, Visa can afford better lawyers than I!). I get paper statements so I've records in case of need. There really is no coldly pragmatic reason not to have multiple ways to access my money and what is not coldly pragmatic...is silly.
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  32. Yemen was fighting the spectacularly incompetent so-called armed forces of Saudi Arabia whose nepotism and incompetence are famous among those tasked with attempting to train them. KSA has a culture of "face" which prohibits building competent forces (but not chopping up dissident reporters).
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  33.  @michaelrmurphy2734  Also note those breaking yards are pretty much the only source of steel for their regions. Unless resale of used ships were forbidden most will end up there for simple economic reasons. The workers rights issues are a matter for those backward third world governments. Human life has no value in those countries and never did. Their cultures, their rules which of course are completely predatory.
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  34. Fuel gas poweplants are vastly lower maintenance than coal. That's a key reason those not familar (I learnt it as an aside during welder training) assume coal competitive with natgas. Exporting the mess to China and getting paid for it is a bargain. In the US fracking killed most of the coal industry (specialty coals excepted). Natgas doesn't leave tons of residue in tailings ponds to pollute drinking water when it eventually escapes. You're likely too young to remember "killer smog" but those were impressively foul and the more recent variety best confined to geopolitical enemies which a high tolerance for collateral damage. Exporting pollution to eager customers is a win.
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  35. That applies everywhere in transportation including aviation. "Good enough" really means "marginal".
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  36. Unlike Charleston, Savannah got state support for appropriate expansion and has a nice lead it should expand. Charleston NIMBYed itself which should be a warning to others. Zeihan should cease commenting outside his wheelhouse. He's an entertainer.
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  37.  @ravenbarsrepairs5594  Don't like policy? Vote.
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  38. The world is large and maritime accidents common. The public have no use for the information since no one not a maritime enthusiast or worker has reason to care.
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  39. They have serious economic post-colonial interests that make it a nationally profitable venture to remain engaged.
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  40. Containers of flammable materials could easily carry an internal fire suppression system appropriate to the cargo but that would (mostly) be too expensive vs. the risk of cargo and vessel loss. I use 40' High Cubes as machine shop and vintage motorcycle garage space and can inert a whole container with the industrial wheeled CO2 extinguishers I scored at auction. I placed them just inside my (added) personnel doors for that purpose. I can slap the lever, close the door and walk away but of course containers for shipping need an automatic system. CO2 is cheap and carbon neutral in most of its production so returning it to the atmosphere it came from is NBD. Automatic fire suppression is a long-solved problem for restaurants who mostly use food-safe agents. Maritime fire suppression is interesting so maybe Sal will grace us with a video on that and civilian damage control.
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  41. There is little reason to care about salving such a trivial vessel vs. getting into lifeboats quick as possible. Drowning for some rich corporation would be senseless.
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  42. The US has billions to buy offshore junk. It can certainly afford better wages for the American workers handling those products. As for "productivity", there is no avoiding those ports so what makes "productivity" relevant for either side when management and labor are under zero competitive threat? Access to the US is most of our trade and higher wages are much better than tariffs because they are not perceived the way tariffs are.
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  43. On what personal professional technical experience do you base that belief? I enjoy hearing from experts.
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  44. Houthi and similar actors have the advantage of expendable systems and humans. Western systems are not yet where we could deploy 24/7 loitering CAPs of expendable drones to smother enemy efforts. Conventional air dominance is prohibitively expensive to maintain over large areas even without firing a shot. Conventional air dominance is so costly even normal accident rates are expensive and CSAR a political disaster even if it succeeds. We need a way to smother enemy systems affordably with ubiquitous expendable assets. Even then only the West (and mainland China) could afford it. However high their quality other NATO navies are pathetically tiny and the best Sailors in history cannot be in two places at once. Rearming to "late early Cold War" levels is long overdue. Disarmament invited all these dispersed global problems because harmlessness is not a defense.
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  45.  Look_What_You_Did  This is Youtube and most Americans read therefore think at below HS level, yet they permit themselves opinions...
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  46. Search engines, what are they? 🤔
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  47.  @JonathanNation  Many mechanics quit that field because of low pay per hour worked (the dealer or shop makes the profit while tech pay hasn't come close to tracking inflation). "Welding" is mostly fab shop work slinging a wire welder on the low end of the pay scale. The structural and pipe business is much smaller and a young man's game. (Mike Rowe is a rich actor paid to make people feel good.) The reality of the trades is not some waterfall of money (for the workers). I'm a lifelong mechanic with machining and welding background, but I was smart enough to join the armed forces to vest a reliable retirement. The auto mechanics including shop owners I knew as a youth told me to avoid the field...in 1978. They were right. I enjoyed industrial mechanics but the companies I worked for left my hometown and/or no longer exist.
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  48. Greek owned? Where is the Greek Navy? Liberian flagged? Where is the Liberian Navy? Fortunately one or several ships = drop in a bucket. No defense will be 100-percent effective and if the major players truly cared about maritime trade they'd quit hiding under US skirts and invest in naval power. Failure to do so means no one else should care when they lose hardware.
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  49. ~$400/ton is a bit more than twice #1 scrap steel buy price at scrapyards or "absurdly low".
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  50. One less Belize-flagged tin can is interesting but not a serious problem. As for cables the sooner REDUNDANT technological solutions are deployed the better and this event is a useful trigger since it's far away from civilization. The more imports to the US cost the better for local insourcing of jobs which the rich deliberately exported. Change is opportunity to be exploited.
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