What kind of fleet could you get for 530 billion USD?

[unmerged(315649)]

Ah, you'll make it in time for Naval War 9. It will have your picture on the cover!

Naval War 9 a.k.a. Naval War: South Atlantic I presume.
In the game First Sea Lord Brutoni personally leads the Royal Navy unto a epic journey to expel the "mighty sea powers" Argentina and Chile from the Falklands and be generally awesome.:happy:
Oh I am already waiting for this game.

Oh and good luck BTW Brutoni. I´ve always enjoyed your posts on this forum.

 

[General Baker]

You might be joking here, but a multiplayer mode where each player is a different arctic circle contender-state with a fleet of their own, on a drawn out naval conflict, could be pretty epic.

 

[unmerged(315649)]

Indeed, being able to control the entire forces of USA, the UK or Russia (150 Backfires OMG:wub, and then give each player one primary and one secondary objective would make one hell of a multiplayer experience.

 

[Amoral]

To put this in perspective.. the us navy spends

$149.9 billion (Not counting the marines) plus another $118.7 billion in joint operations per YEAR. So good luck running a navy with your lump sum.

The US borrowed ALL of that money though. Norway is solvent and has collateral. There's no reason to think they could not also issue government bonds to pay for a large blue water Navy.

 

[unmerged(255172)]

For a small country like Norway, manpower would be more of a resource problem than money. How would you get all the people to work on manning, support, logistics of this massive fleet (and its supporting air force) even if you paid for somebody to build and equip it? Either you'd have to use long-term conscription (not politically feasible) or you would have to persuade thousands of young men (mostly) and women to take this work and then pay for their highly specialized training.

In Norway, any skilled work competes directly with the well-paying (and strategically important) oil industry, as unemployment is virtually nil. Even if you paid very well, many would simply not want work which took them away from friends and family for months.

Only a crisis that made conscription politically possible could justify this, and then you'd still need years to get a modern navy up and running. As Cunningham famously said, "It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition." Norway hasn't had a tradition for large scale navies for around a thousand years, and currently there is no manpower to even contemplate it.

 

[imperialman]

The US borrowed ALL of that money though. Norway is solvent and has collateral. There's no reason to think they could not also issue government bonds to pay for a large blue water Navy.

Erm, the US can (mostly) still afford to run a huge navy. Norway has an annual income of around 200 billion, I don't really think it is capable of running a large blue water navy. It simply doesn't have and can't afford the yearly cost.

 

[Tjena Med Laxen]

The US borrowed ALL of that money though. Norway is solvent and has collateral. There's no reason to think they could not also issue government bonds to pay for a large blue water Navy.

Norway doesn't have anywhere the economy to support a debt like that. Solvent or not, while the US is still capable of repaying the debt in the future.

 

[Alex_brunius]

For a small country like Norway, manpower would be more of a resource problem than money.

Thats why you should buy swedish equipment.

The kockums/bofors built weaponsystems, ships and submarines are very crew efficient with probably one of the highest degrees off automation in the world.

How about a sub with a crew of 24? (possibly as little as 17 in the future model) or a corvette with a crew off 43.

The same with the JAS39Gripen, very little maintainence personel needed and starts off road bases.



Alot of fighting power for little crew.

 

[imperialman]

Thats why you should buy swedish equipment.

The kockums/bofors built weaponsystems, ships and submarines are very crew efficient with probably one of the highest degrees off automation in the world.

How about a sub with a crew of 24? (possibly as little as 17 in the future model) or a corvette with a crew off 43.

The same with the JAS39Gripen, very little maintainence personel needed and starts off road bases.



Alot of fighting power for little crew.

I'm sure Norway was effectively bullied into buying the F-35.

 

[unmerged(424506)]

The kockums/bofors built weaponsystems, ships and submarines are very crew efficient with probably one of the highest degrees off automation in the world.

How about a sub with a crew of 24? (possibly as little as 17 in the future model) or a corvette with a crew off 43.

The same with the JAS39Gripen, very little maintainence personel needed and starts off road bases.



Alot of fighting power for little crew.

It's all very well being lean manned during peacetime with a high degree of automation, it's cheaper in the long term (personnel generally make up the biggest single cost of a Navy) and does work if done correctly. However, equipment and personnel aren't put under the sort of pressure in peace that will occur during a proper war. Automation is fine as long as it keeps working but as soon as you start introducing battle damage and battle fatigue, you lose a huge amount of resilience as you don't have the manpower to overcome equipment and personnel losses to keep fighting through. At best you'll be forced out of the fight until things are fixed, at worst you'll get sunk or leave a taskgroup underprotected and vulnerable.

 

[unmerged(255320)]

I'm sure Norway was effectively bullied into buying the F-35.

You are right, the lobbying powers are terrifying sometimes.