It's all hype, as the article points out. "Battleship", it's not. No mention of armor. A battleship is supposed to be able to withstand a hit from its own primary weapon. The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers". They did not do well in WWI and WWII.[1] Nor did the armored battleships. No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack.
But they looked really cool.
Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships. Being near a hostile coast held by someone with modern weapons is death to a navy today. The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones.
[1] https://hmshood.org.uk/history/bcorigins.htm
[2] https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/china-s-df-27-miss...
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships.
Not to mention China's attack submarines, with their own anti-ship missiles as well as old-fashioned torpedoes. They have proven their ability to pop up and say "hello!" to US warships in the past. [0] Getting that close wouldn't be as easy when everyone is on a wartime footing, but then again, US ships would be steaming right towards them...
[0] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2007/january/worl...
> It's all hype
It’s geriatric hype. It tells you how the administration is thinking about the Navy: in terms someone born in the 1940s—and who never refreshed their assumptions since childhood—can understand.
What we should have are floating, automated drone-production platforms that can be mass manufactured themselves and shipped to right ahead of the front for overwhelming the enemy’s sea-based defences (while F-35s take care of SEAD). Instead we get Popeye with a rail gun.
maybe... maybe we should stop electing these ancient white bastards whose brains fossilized back in the days of rotary phones and vacuum tubes. I don't know.
Yeah but the other option was a chick
>The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers".
Do you mean 'battle cruisers'?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser
'Light cruisers' were different again.
>No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack.
Bismark was finished off by surface ships after the initial air attack.
Tirpitz took many sorties to sink.
The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower.
It probably doesn't really matter, as this thing is never going to be built. I kind of suspect everybody is just going into "ok grandpa" mode until he loses interest and starts chasing some other half baked thing.
> It probably doesn't really matter
Millions—if not billions—of dollars are likely to be wasted on this over the coming years.
At least the name Golden Fleet makes sense since everything the US military buys is priced like it's made of solid gold.
Don't worry - we're dismantling our science and research infrastructure and cutting welfare programs so it all evens out.
They're hard at work nuking the dollar too so maybe that doesn't matter anymore then
Not "wasted." Handed to allies of the administration. It's just naked kleptocracy.
I suspect that the "ball room" attachment to the White House will also still be a hole by the end of the administration, but a lot of money will get handed out.
But think of the aesthetics!
That super sized destroyer has non of the battleship aesthetics though.
Indeed. WW1 and WW2 battleships are incredible pieces of engineering and (IMHO) rather beautiful in their own way. And some of them were built in very short time frames when you consider they had no computers to design them with.
Big “beautiful” bill comes to mind.
As much as I love any opportunity to stick it to Trump, wasting billions of dollars is about the only thing the US Navy does anymore; in this case he's keeping them on-brand and on-mission. It's kind of hilarious they announced this at the same time as the Constellation-class getting canceled, just to make sure there's no chance the Navy goes even a single day without an active boondoggle of a ship which will never sail.
> As much as I love any opportunity to stick it to Trump
You’re the first one in this thread mentioning him.
The non-battleship in question is literally named the Trump Class.
And has an image of him on the back of the ship on this rendering:
https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/USS-Defiant-T...
It doesn’t matter if you assume that large scale conventional conflict between the us navy and the plan over Taiwan is impossible in a world with strategic nuclear weapons, otherwise it very much does matter, because navies are built on the timescale of decades and the plans you make today very much determine the future you will live in 10/20 years from now.
Yes, the opportunity cost is the real problem with all of this. A navy takes approximately forever to build.
If we are extremely lucky the outcome of this will be increased shipyard capacity and refined shipbuilding practices just in time to switch back to building a multitude of actually-useful ships.
But most likely is that this ends up delaying the U.S.'s ability to build back its navy in time to matter, which is a tremendous issue given how we do our commerce and where some of our deepest friends are physically located.
If the navy diverts funds from the ddgx program for this, the usn goes from struggling to keep up with the plan’s expansion to being at risk of being completely outmatched in the late 2030’s / 40’s.
>On the whole, it’s pretty clearly a grab-bag of stuff that sounded cool, thrown together without any real attempt to explain how is this better spending an equivalent amount of money on Burkes or on the DDG(X) program, which was going to come in around 15,000 tons, and which this is allegedly supposed to replace.
Yeah it's an ego project for someone with a fragile ego.
The US navy is in freefall. The best we can do is build a 40 year old destroyer hull and an aircraft carrier class that we plan to be building for literally 100 years. Shipyards can't build anything. Every design is mismanaged so poorly and leached on by traitorous defense contractors so badly that we get essentially nothing but the bill.
> best we can do
Why would you take this as an indication of the “best we can do”?
I think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best'. Theoretically we could be so much better, which is why everyone is so grumpy about U.S. shipbuilding.
For 'practical best' you'd normally point people to examples of warships the U.S. actually can build without much drama, but if you try this with the Navy you're basically left with, what, the last LPD class?
10 years ago you'd call the Virginia SSNs a success, but even those have now run into construction delays due to various issues, even as the Navy needs their #1 priority (Columbia-class SSBN, also delayed) to succeed to decommission the Ohios on time.
> think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best’
I guess I question this, too. This “battleship” a cartoon drawn for the President. It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
There is a broader, genuine criticism of American warship building. But this battleship has as much to do with that as do rubber ducks.
I'm not saying its the best we should do. But its the best we are capable of doing.
"The missile is too round at the top, it needs to be pointy. Round missiles are not scary"
- The Dictator
The spec on this piece of propaganda is the main battery is all missile systems. And the secondary is 5" guns, lasers, and a railgun.
The Navy stopped trying to install railguns back in 2021 but never stopped development.
I assume the lasers are future tech that sound cool, except this thing will be cancelled right after the next admin renames Dept of War back to DoD.
Lasers might be really useful if a ship is being attacked by a swarm of drones. (The part about hitting those drones may be future, though...)
The same blog has an excellent series on lasers as a naval weapon:
part 1: https://www.navalgazing.net/Lasers-at-Sea-Part-1
NB/ Lasers do not cope well with smoke, fog or rain.
> right after the next admin renames Dept of War back to DoD
It's never actually been renamed. They just changed the stationery and website: https://www.usa.gov/agencies/u-s-department-of-defense.
Just like how Trump called in workers to put his name on the Kennedy Center building. Changing the name requires an act of Congress: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/76i
Wat?! But I've already cut off the tags on my new Dept of War swag and apparel!
At least I have the new updated globe with the renamed Gulf of America. They promised to send overlay stickers once Greenland and Canada become US states.
So the trump admin is going something like a battleship. I would be surprised if they would be capable of doing that.
From what I have read and heard, they are much better at destroying existing functional structures than building functional things.
Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles? It seems like, should a large-scale war happen again, it will look entirely different from the wars in the 20th century.
> Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?
Given 90s-era NATO air defences are shooting down Russia’s newest hypersonic missiles [1], I’m continuing to treat the category as more hype than utility.
[1] https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2024/11/20/ukraines-patrio...
China's hypersonics may work better than Russia's.
May. Or maybe the whole thing is just hype.
> China's hypersonics may work better than Russia's
They probably do. But absent positive profiling, it doesn’t make sense to design against a hypothetical super weapon.
That presumes no future innovation or improvement in defense systems.
Which with the way the US is being managed might be true, but generally there's no evidence that China has a missile which cannot be intercepted by refined means we already know.
Ships are the only way to transport and deploy certain weapons across theaters; as such, there is no simple way to replace them. Your argument could be made in the era of Soviet anti-ship cruise missiles (and that argument was made), yet navies have continued to develop and deploy warships.
Yes, but in an age of guided missiles, surely better to have 3x10k ton warship than 1x30k ton warship.
>Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?
Well China has been building aircraft carrier mockups on train rails in the desert to test something on them while they're in motion...so I'd say unclear
Source?
This is reminiscent of the Homer: https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer
“The Homer” is best compared to the M2 Bradley, whose development process was described in the book (and later movie) “The Pentagon Wars”. Unfortunately, all large combat systems (most notably ships) tend to come with a grab bag of ‘features’ of varying utility.
Bradleys are actually very useful and likely best in their class as an infantry fighting vehicle.
The Bradley has performed very well in Ukraine, and the man who wrote that book is both a liar and crazy.
Read up on what his proposed alternative was.
>Read up on what his proposed alternative was.
Perhaps you could give a summary?
It's going to be the "cybertruck of the seas" is what it's going to be if it's not quietly shelved when he gets distracted by some other thing that offends him.
If you’re looking for a “cybertruck of the seas”, I think the Zumwalt class is a prime candidate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer
It had some potential, but that potential has been squandered, at great cost.
The stats are crazy:
In commission: 15 October 2016[3]
Planned: 32
Completed: 3
Cancelled: 29
Active: 2We should christen it as a new class of ships: the dreadyep. With any luck, the gold encrustations will sink it when it is set afloat. Barring that, maybe some midshipman will "forget" to seal off a bilge port.
A modern continuation of the Swedish Wasa class?
Yeah that's what the military youtubers are saying too...makes no sense
Unless the intention is to attract a lot of attention, in which case it makes perfect sense.
Interesting read. Given what was covered and tradition notwithstanding, I think “Trump Class” (apart from being an oxymoron) is a perfect designation:
- oversized
- completely lacking in style
- not technically capable for the role it finds itself in!
I believe the designation you are looking for is “all-round fucking stupid”
Related to the definition of Battleship for the fellow pedantic: What is a tank
https://acoup.blog/2022/05/06/collections-when-is-a-tank-not...
Less humorously, the proposed Trump class "Battleship" is what a teenage armchair general would dream up. The kind of person who thinks Ministry of War sounds cool and cosplays as his favourite operator.
As a non-American living across the pond, the thing that is most terrifying to me about Trump's presidency isn't his authoritarian tendencies, corruption, cruelty, or criminality. The world has seen plenty of leaders like that. Maybe not recently in so-called Western countries, but it happens. What's novel is his sheer idiocy. Calling him a moron is an insult to the intelligence of morons. And what's so terrifying about it isn't that a man so stupid was elected president of such a big and important country, although that's bad enough, but seeing American titans of industry and other members of its elite - people possessing real power - seriously discussing, or even praising, the quality of the emperor's new clothes.
It's always like this with authoritarians. They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often. They become the giver of power, and so those who want power do whatever they have to in order to get the big man to give it to them.
So the only surprises are 1) how fast this happened, and 2) that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.
> They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often
Yes, but they're rarely that stupid. The world sees a man say five times that he's lowered drug prices by 400-1500%. And that was just last week. For many Europeans it's remarkable to even come across a person that stupid.
> that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.
I never thought they were brilliant. I just thought they wouldn't sell themselves so cheaply or would be so easily intimidated.
Except that this particular authoritarian in question is likely intellectually unable to parse the truth, while also being completely uninterested in it
"Trump Class Battleship" - absurd
"Gulf of America" - absurd
"Tariffs will reduce inflation" - absurd
"Trump Kennedy Center" - absurd
"Mexico will pay for the wall" - absurd
"Ukraine started the war" - absurd
"We'll make drugs 1500% cheaper" - absurd
---
Why does MAGA love absurdity so much?
Believing in the absurd is a test of loyalty to the regime.
Perhaps for the same reason that conspiracy theorists need to ‘one-up’ each other - it’s a signal that you’re part of the group.
Hey come on buddy, it's not like there's a list of the 30,573 outright lies or misleading statements made by Grifter in Chief since his first term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements...
They're authoritarians. Study fascism, or Nazism, or any authoritarian cult. All of them are absurd.
If you want to know what the Navy was/is really planning look up the DDG(X).
A destroyer planned since 2021, hopefully it won't be another Ticonderoga class fuck up.
Whatever this febrile dream vaporware could be, it's still way too big for modern combat. Don't take my word for it, listen to a US Navy Commander, a serious person obviously, explain how it's terrible and completely inattentive to real USN needs and doctrine. https://youtu.be/0Zqa9azGo6M
Moreover though, it's another facet of the show of the White House occupant embellishing their ego and playing the reality star part through random, aspirational concepts of a plan.
PS: I dislike almost all Republicans and most Democrats, especially all of the ones who take bribes from corporations and foreign governments, so this isn't a political message but a reality statement.
I dislike almost all Republicans and most Democrats, especially all of the ones who take bribes from corporations and foreign governments
As opposed to the corrupt King who loves to pardon corrupt politicians, no matter their stripe.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/cre...
I mean the whole proposal is nothing more than some of Trump's staffers coming up with an image and a bullet list and him liking it.
The Navy is gonna slow role this thing till he's out of office then reform the plan. Which is insanely annoying to me as a tax payer as we've basically had 25 years of the Navy's procurement being an absolute disaster, and now we're gonna lost another 4+ years over Trump's idiotic showboating.
I guess some defense contractor paid to sit next to him at dinner. KA-CHING!
I wish SNL was currently on the air and made a hell of a joke out of that announcement...
Here's my sketch idea: Naval officers unveil the ship, but when they pull the curtains, they murmur that it's smaller than claimed (The ships will be bigger, faster and a hundred times more powerful than any previous US-built warship, according to Trump(1)). Stormy Daniels shows up and says "Oh yeah, he likes to brag, but it's more like a mushroom.".
Cut to the bridge of the ship, the navigation officer comes to the Captain and says "Sir, the ship can't navigate properly. It seems whatever coordinates we set it always wants to head to... Epstein Island!"
Then the radar officer says "Sir, we are picking up something on the radar. It's a big, it's long...". Cut to footage of a big, black, submarine. The Captain interrupts with "That must be the Obama-Class submarine! The biggest, baddest ship we've ever had!", and the crew look at it in awe.
Then Obama shows up and lectures the viewing public: "Impressive, huh? But in reality there's no Obama-class submarine. The legacy of leading the country should be measured by how it improved Americans' lives, not by the ships and ballrooms." (this message needs to be workshopped...)
Stormy Daniels reappears and says "I know which ship I'd rather be on (wink).". Then fade out the scene with the crew panickedly saying "Captain, the ship is losing power! It looks like it's falling asleep!".
(1) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/22/trump-new-na...
Taiwan will be betrayed just like Ukraine.
Despite Trump childish behavior, Ukraine is still getting a lot of weapons and money last I checked.