{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Paul Truesdell Podcast","title":"The Essential National Security Economics of the U.S. Navy - Part 1","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":736,"description":"South Korea’s Shipbuilding MightIf you want to understand modern naval power, you cannot skip over South Korea. What that country has built on its southeastern coast is staggering. The city of Ulsan is home to Hyundai Heavy Industries, the largest shipyard on Earth, and right next to it sits Hyundai Mipo Dockyard. Together, they form an industrial footprint so large that you could lose an entire American city inside it.Let’s put some American measurements on the table. Ulsan’s main yard sprawls across nearly 1,600 acres of waterfront. That is about 2.5 square miles of dry docks, assembly halls, cranes, piers, and fitting-out basins. Compare that to a typical American football stadium, which takes up about 13 acres. Hyundai’s yard alone is the equivalent of more than 120 football stadiums laid side by side. And this is not counting the additional footprint of Hyundai Mipo just down the shoreline.What comes out of those yards is just as impressive as the size. In commercial terms, they can produce up to 10 million gross tons of shipping a year. That is not a typo. Ten million. In plain English, that means dozens of supertankers, container ships, LNG carriers, and yes, naval combatants if the order book calls for them. They have the flexibility to switch production lines from a commercial ship one year to a naval frigate the next. That kind of dual-use capacity gives South Korea enormous strategic flexibility.Now, South Korea does not focus exclusively on warships the way America’s Newport News does, but it does produce highly capable naval vessels. Frigates, destroyers, submarines — even amphibious assault ships — roll off the same lines that once produced the biggest commercial ships on Earth. The reason they can do this is that the government has backed the industry with research and development investment, and the shipyards themselves have consolidated. Hyundai Heavy Industries and Hyundai Mipo are in the process of merging, which will further concentrate...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/115-XsjkdwCpJ99xv-8oZ76t6jr8ScWEC5MYSKzL0ig/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS82MTUx/OWRiNTc0NTk0Y2Nk/M2VjYTliMGVhN2Zm/YTZkZi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}