Rolling Thunder.

Nine Heavens.

Nothing says “stocking stuffer” quite like News Items, the gift that keeps on giving all year long. To “gift” someone a News Items subscription, click on the “button” below.

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You’ll be receiving the latest News Items podcast in your in-box today at noon. If you listen to the first 15 minutes, I am certain you will listen to the whole thing. It’s that interesting, because the guest, Juan Enriquez, is great.

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1. The New York Times Editorial Board:

America can’t make what the military needs. In 2020 the Navy had a simple plan to build its next fleet of small warships, the Constellation class: take a European design and build it in America. But the Navy’s constant changes complicated the project.

The shipbuilders and supply chain couldn’t keep up. By 2025, the Navy had overhauled 85 percent of the original design — and it still wasn’t final. On Nov. 25, the military cancelled the Constellation project. It cost $3.5 billion and has produced zero ships. The Constellation is just the latest in a string of American shipbuilding failures.

Over the past 35 years the Navy has commissioned more than half a dozen new kinds of ships, from small combat vessels to large destroyers. Nearly all of them have flopped, running billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule and failing to perform as promised, leaving the military reliant on a fleet designed largely in the Reagan era.

Recent efforts to build fighter and bomber aircraft have similarly disappointed. It takes, on average, 12 years to produce a war-ready jet, ship or tank, and the Air Force is retiring planes faster than it can replace them. America’s defense industry, like so much of the economy, has lost the ability to build quickly and effectively. (Read the rest. Source: nytimes.com.)

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2. China conducted the maiden flight of what is considered to be the world’s largest drone mothership, underscoring its advances in unmanned aerial vehicles capable of unleashing weaponized swarms. The unmanned “Jiutian” completed its first mission in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday without elaborating. The aerial vehicle has been likened to an aircraft carrier for its ability to host multiple drones and missiles. Jiutian means “nine heavens” — a Chinese term for extremely high skies. Jiutian was introduced to the public last year at an air show in Zhuhai. The drone can carry up to six tons and has eight hardpoints for guided bombs, air-to-air and anti-ship missiles, and kamikaze drones — loitering munitions that wait for targets before crashing into them, typically with explosives. Its belly can also carry more than 100 small drones designed to launch in swarms to overwhelm enemy air defenses. (Source: bloomberg.com)

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3. For the past three decades, as China’s economy has developed into a global powerhouse, investment has grown reliably each year. That is about to change. This year, China’s investments in assets like new factories, public infrastructure and housing are expected to fall for the first time since the late 1980s, ushering in a more conservative era for an economy that has reshaped the global order with years of robust growth. From January to October, a broad measure called fixed-asset investment has fallen 1.7 percent from the same period last year. The slide began in the second half of this year and accelerated with a sharp, double-digit decline in October. Analysts believe that investment dipped again in November, with that data scheduled to be released on Monday. Investment in property, infrastructure and manufacturing — the three major components that make up the figure — are all declining at the same time. In the past, a downturn in one area was offset by spending in another segment. It is rare for all three pillars of investment to fall at once. (Source: nytimes.com)

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4. China’s exports are putting it on a collision course with Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron has branded the trade imbalance with China “unbearable,” saying what’s at stake now is “a question of life or death for European industry.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen believes the bloc’s ties with China “have reached an inflection point.” The scale of the imbalances with the European Union was thrown into stark relief days ago when Beijing disclosed its trade surplus with the bloc had widened to a record approaching $300 billion in 2025. The value of China’s exports to the EU is now more than double its imports, as Chinese sellers divert goods facing levies in the US. “The China shock in Europe is really starting to hit,” said Andrew Small, director of the Asia program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “What you’ve now had in recent months has been much greater levels of urgency, not all of it playing out in public, but serious crisis meetings taking place.” The result could be the biggest rethink of EU policy toward Beijing in at least a decade. (Sources: bloomberg.com, ecfr.eu)

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5. The oil market faces a “super glut” next year as a burst of new supply collides with weakness in the global economy, one of the world’s biggest commodity traders has warned. Saad Rahim, chief economist of Trafigura, said on Tuesday that new drilling projects and slowing demand growth were likely to weigh further on already depressed crude prices next year. “Whether it’s a glut, or a super glut, it’s hard to get away from that,” Rahim said in remarks alongside the company’s annual results. Brent crude has fallen 16 per cent this year, on track for its worst year since 2020. Prices are expected to be further damped by major projects coming online next year, including in Brazil and Guyana. (Source: ft.com)

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