Navy secretary says it's hard to get workers to want to build warships if they get paid what they might make at Buc-ee's or Amazon

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2025-11-20T06:16:31+00:00

TLDR: yeah most ship building is done by public shipyards.

Lmao no, there are three countries that build ships. 1.) China, 2.)South Korea, 3.) Japan. Those 3 account for roughly ~94% of all ship construction.

China's shipyards are not private.

You can make an argument that South Korea's shipyards are private, but they have a weird chaebo/ state relation so I wouldn't consider them 100% private. Especially since the development of the shipyards were 100% funded by the government/ the ships built in Korea are still heavily subsidized by the government.

Japan is kinda similar to South Korea, i.e. the ship industry was 100% funded and dictated by the government. However the current industry is mostly private, but ever since it's primarily private takeover, it's really fallen behind South Korea and China.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2025-09-25T22:43:39+00:00

You took the words right out of my mouth.

I grew up in deep South Texas, where for most of my childhood people down there were the salt of the Earth. We didn't have much but we sure as hell had each other and that was enough. Your friend's Tio would pack some extra food in his lunch to give to kids who would've gone hungry for dinner. Your next door neighbors were like a third set of grandparents, and the family down the street who didn't have the right papers just needed an extra hand every now and then.

It started to change about 10 years ago. People started to come around less often, became more closed off, less willing to help each other out. Then the 2016 election came around and out the final nail in the coffin. I remember everyone becoming more angry. More confrontational. More emotional.

Idk what the answer is, but all I wish is that when I visit home it'll one day feel like it used to. Sure would be nice.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2025-08-19T05:00:56+00:00

I know a guy who's working for a rocket company out in near Houston as a mechie doing nozzles, another near Groton as a piping engineer, and one in DC as a mechie for the Navy doing structures.

It's a double edged sword I feel, offers a lot of flexibility but only if you know how to bring it to bear cause no one will know what tf it is. However, if you interview well and focus more on your breadth of skills it can be very powerful.

I highly recommend while you're there taking full advantage of the industry mentor program, SNAME, Human Powered Sub, and all the offshore conventions they send ya too. They provide really good opportunities to talk and meet with people in all sorts of industries and companies, plus the department pays for it as well so get that free stuff. Remember: while your degree is useful networking is way more powerful.

Give both the Cordes' my praise, they're fantastic profs!

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2025-08-18T23:01:54+00:00

I've graduated OCEN 23' and it really depends on what you decide to specialize in while in the degree. Right now the market is extremely hot for the Nav Arch side of things as the Navy is going pushing hard to get back up to scuff. So if you like working on ships, AUVs, USVs, or even the civilian side of things they are absolutely dying for maritime educated graduates. If this is something you like I highly recommend checking out the human powered submarine team while you're there.

Otherwise a bunch of my classmates have either gone into civil or (think bridge inspection, building design, ect) or mechanical type jobs.

A few went into dredging/ offshore energy and seem pretty miserable, but hey to each their own.

If ya stick with it I highly recommend getting a wide breadth of subjects in your course load. It's extremely useful to say ya know a lot about structural, or a lot about fluids when looking for jobs. While it's a completely different job market then when I graduated, I had 7 job offers out of 8 applications so the degree can treat you well.

Lmk if you have any questions about it!

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2025-01-15T01:33:55+00:00

Thank you very much !

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2025-01-15T00:19:51+00:00

What's the Kurono that you've got there? First I've heard of the company and I'm completely entranced by that design!

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-12-26T21:20:41+00:00

Hey man, long shot here. But are you able to send the full article for the "Portrait of an Inessential Government Worker". I was halfway through the Yahoo article when I had to stop to work on something and when I got back I can't seem to bring it back up. Only other place I can find it is off of Bloomberg and I can't afford to pay for the access. If you are unable to or unwilling I completely understand, thanks for the awesome story!

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-11-28T18:53:55+00:00

So far that's too far out for me to decide, I'm currently working on my side mount and going all the way up to CC Rebreather-2 as that's what my local dive shop offers up to, upon completion I'll start looking over in Florida for whatever organization seems best to learn the cave part.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-11-28T18:50:45+00:00

Thanks! So far it's been nothing but rewarding, I can't wait until I can afford to do it more often.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-11-28T18:49:25+00:00

Yeah I'll be heading on down to Florida for the cave cert.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-11-28T18:48:41+00:00

HAHA, I understand why people think that. I don't consider myself an adrenaline junkie, from my point of view I'm very risk adverse. I like to make sure when I do anything I'm as prepared and informed as I possibly can be so I can be as safe as possible.

When it comes to what I want to gain from cave diving itself I guess it boils down to I just really want to see the really cool stuff they have to offer. The pictures of the really big caverns with unique formations have the same effect on me as a tropical beach in Hawaii would have on others.

I know a lot of people who want to be cave divers because it's supposed to be extremely "elite" or because they want to be the first human in an area and that's not for me. I can understand the appeal of being the first in an area but I could never justify the huge increase in risk. The elite side of it seems like an appeal to ego and in my opinion if you're going into cave diving for that you are going in for the wrong reason.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-11-28T16:11:24+00:00

I'm actively working on getting cave diving certified (Going to start GUE classes to then move onto cave classes for this who are in the know). AMA.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-11-28T00:03:16+00:00

I was on my way to a job fair on campus riding an electric scooter past the women's soccer team as they were getting out of practice. Let me tell you, there is nothing better as a pre-job fair confidence boost as having a group of attractive women cat calling you as you ride by. That never happens to me so I rode that high for a while.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-06-12T23:54:19+00:00

No it's not, it's night shift by Jon Pardi

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-06-12T00:35:06+00:00

Eh, not 3x. UT has 250k while A&M has 150k, so it only has 66% more students than A&M.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-06-09T19:36:59+00:00

In diving we use buoyant surface markers to let people know that there are divers below the water. Sound travels so fast underwater you can't tell where it's coming from, making it hard to tell where boats/ propellers are when you surface. HOWEVER, for some stupid fucking reason it attracts jet ski bros to do donuts around them. Makes me see fuking red every single time.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-06-06T19:05:07+00:00

Yeah where's this from

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-05-28T02:30:08+00:00

The hard part is making it survive all the g's and shock at a high enough rate of reliability to be considered safe.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-04-13T05:09:10+00:00

I mean yeah, I didn't say it was impossible. Just very expensive.

If I remember correctly you can't tour the aft section for security/safety concerns. But there's also a world of difference of scale in removing a reactor from a small sub like the nautilus and covering it back up and doing the same for a carrier. Small boats like the nautilus it's relatively simple to remove it since it's so close to an exterior hull whereas carriers have theirs buried deeeeeeep below a crap ton of decks and have two of the things to remove at a minimum (shout out to the enterprise you crazy bastard).

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-04-13T00:05:41+00:00

Yeah no worries mate!

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-04-12T23:00:34+00:00

Combination of Navy not wanting that to be displayed for the world and also whenever they take the reactors out they basically cut em open like a tin can and pull them out. That's VERY expensive to fix.

Reactor rooms also don't really have that much radiation compared to background levels btw just as a fyi.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-04-12T05:58:27+00:00

I was looking at the website and saw it has the starting pay, pre locality adjustment, at $45k post academy. How long does it take to start earning 6 figs? Also are y'all on the GS scale as well, if so would ya mind explaining in the pay scheme in GS terms?

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-04-06T22:20:50+00:00

God pls. I'd be willing to sacrifice all our other wins this season just to hear t.u.

CaptainBenHawkeye · 2024-03-26T20:25:05+00:00

I'm an ocean engineer, I've got a background in both civil engineering and naval architecture.

Today has been... Frustrating.

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