US President Donald Trump has announced a bold plan for the US Navy to build a new, large warship that he is calling a “battleship” as part of a larger vision to create a “golden fleet.”
“They’ll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump said during the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
He said the ship, the first of which would be named the USS Defiant would be longer and larger than the World War II-era Iowa-class battleships and would be armed with hypersonic missiles, nuclear cruise missiles, rail guns, and high-powered lasers — all technologies that are in various stages of development by the US Navy.
Photo: AP
The announcement comes just a month after the US Navy scrapped its plans to build a new, small warship, citing growing delays and cost overruns, deciding instead to go with a modified version of a US Coast Guard cutter that was being produced until recently. The sea service has also failed to build its other newly designed ships, such as the new Ford-class aircraft carrier and Columbia-class submarines, on time and on budget.
Meanwhile, the US Navy has struggled to field some of the technologies Trump says would be aboard the new ship.
It spent hundreds of millions of dollars and more than 15 years trying to field a railgun aboard a ship before finally abandoning the effort in 2021.
Laser technology has seen more success in making its way onto navy ships in the past few years, but its employment is still limited.
One system that is designed to blind or disable drone sensors is now aboard eight destroyers after spending eight years in development.
Developing nuclear cruise missile capabilities or deploying them on ships might also contravene non-proliferation treaties that the US has signed with Russia.
A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing plans, said that design efforts are under way for the new ship and construction is planned to begin in the early 2030s.
Trump and US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan spoke about the new Trump-class warship as a spiritual successor to the battleships of the 20th century, but historically that term has referred to a very specific type of ship — a large, heavily armored vessel armed with massive guns designed to bombard other ships or targets ashore.
This type of ship was at the height of prominence during World War II, and the largest of the US battleships, the Iowa-class, were about 60,000 tonnes. However, after World War II, the battleship’s role in modern fleets diminished rapidly in favor of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles. The US Navy did modernize four Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s by adding cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, along with modern radars, but by the 1990s all four were decommissioned.
According to a newly created Web site for the “golden fleet,” this new “guided missile battleship” is set to be roughly the same size as Iowa-class battleships, but only weigh about half as much, about 35,000 tonnes, and have far smaller crews — between 650 and 850 sailors.
Its primary weapons would also be missiles, not large naval guns.
Trump said he would have a direct role in designing the new warship, adding that “the US Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person.”
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