the new "trump" class ships are much smaller, more in line with blowing up small boats and quick missions. But they are risky.

Hopefully, someone with thwart attempts to call them "trump class."

Despite the grandiosity required for Trump's attention, they are small and badly needed ships for the Navy. Only time will tell if they are the next loser in the current run of vessels that failed to meet requirements. The Navy is really struggling to put hulls in the water.

The proposed frigate will be based in the Coast Guard’s Legend class cutter , which is about 4000 tons, while this ship will be around 35,000 tons

The Navy has it's own head so far up its ass when it comes to shipbuilding it thinks shit tastes like chocolate.

Replacing the Ticonderoga cruisers and Burke destroyers. 13,000 tons and 600' long.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDG(X)

“The new platform will be a more than 35,000-ton warship and draft 24 to 30 feet, according to Navy data reviewed by USNI News. That’s more than double the size of the 15,000-ton Zumwalt class of destroyers, which is the largest surface combatant currently in the fleet.“

https://news.usni.org/2025/12/22/trump-unveils-new-battleship-class-proposed-uss-defiant-will-be-largest-u-s-surface-combatant-since-wwii

DDG(X) has already slipped far into the future - 2035 or beyond - and not much worth thinking about either. Just something to throw money at each year to keep it on life support.

The best strategy to revive naval shipbuilding is to start at basic technology levels. Develop specialized industrial robots and all other kinds of robots until we get an effective welder robot. Develop the ability to produce large ship hulls with complete internal structure using Additive Manufacturing / 3D Printing. Develop Fusion Reactors to revolutionize ship propulsion.

A frigate based on the proven Coast Guard Legend class National Security cutters.

We don't have the ability to rapidly build to new designs, as Japan has done with the Mogami frigate. But the Legend class can be a Mini-Mogami (or Mogami Mini-me?) and it's long range can be helpful in the Pacific.

Plus "by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built".
https://apnews.com/article/trump-navy-golden-fleet-battleship-0940368b39b19f03abe8689ebad08380

The Navy's "Golden Navy" page says they're going to be 850 feet long and displace 35,000 tons. That's slightly shorter and about three-quarters the displacement of USS Iowa. What they do NOT have is naval rifles - their primary weapon is nuclear missiles.

Last edited Mon Dec 22, 2025, 07:52 PM - Edit history (1)

More along the lines of a battle cruiser like the old Soviet Kirov class. They had crews of less than 1000.

If we were to build a battleship in the classic sense , big guns and heavy armor, it would shrug off any missile short of nuclear. The cost, however, would be prohibitive. And it's questionable whether still have the industry to turn out the needed components

is the more appropriate designation. But this is Trump...it must be largest and most besterest ever...

"the biggest ever"---- but Trump isn't very good with numbers....

but little President Bone Spurs likes the name battleship better.
https://i.postimg.cc/cL0RmxSY/1KbGeP89QgGUNPST4sbvmA.webp

battleships and battlecruisers were vulnerable to air power:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_Prince_of_Wales_and_Repulse

Last edited Tue Dec 23, 2025, 12:20 AM - Edit history (1)

Okay, Navy Combat System Chief (ret.) here - not a gunny, but worked with missile, guns, and radar systems, and more importantly, have worked in shipbuilding and modernization for decades.

1. Other Navy ships have large guns, and the hull tonnage to support those guns increases exponentially the larger or more guns you add. And as your guns have to rotate and be able to adjust altitude, again, the larger the gun, the heavier the moving parts and greater the power needed to fire those guns.
Not to mention deck clearance required just to aim and fire those guns.
2. So a ship with guns is going to have to be bigger, and go through rigorous modeling to look at ship handling and operational risks - not only deck safety and damage control issues, but power distribution, hull integrity, and other systems operations during firing, from just maneuvering and firing off one gun to a full flanking battery fire. "Asthetics " be damned, you need gunnery people involved, not some golf hack who builds Minecraft buildings, puts gold leaf on everything, and whose buddies think the Cyber Truck is something "Blade Runner" would drive (I'm sure Harlen Ellison and his character Deckard would have comments on that...)
And definitely not the type of complicated maritime engineering I'd trust any AI currently available to do without serious oversight and slide rule engineering level corrections.
3. Another point - what sorts of guns are they talking about? Conventional Kinetic, "Rail Guns", or Laser Beams?
I'm sorry, a rail gun that is more efficient than missiles or current guns, or high intensity lasers with enough power to take down incoming air targets or damage surface targets will need a nuclear power plant at least as large as the ones on a Carrier. Even if you use a plant the size of the average submarine, you're still looking at something that will need a lot of internal infrastructure to support. And very expensive to build.
Do you really, really want to rush building a nuclear power plant?

Anyway, my final comment here goes back to the first question that should have been asked:

Do we really need a battleship, in the current war arena where drones and missiles are taking out ships pretty easily from further away than a gun or "beam" type weapon would be effective? Would a battleship be useful in future naval combat, where potential targets are mobile and warfare is asymmetric across several different types of battlefields?
A missile or drone strikes me as being the more effective deployable weapon in terms of both tactical and cost. And a "Battleship" supports neither.

Ah well, they'll probably bring back or modify a Littoral Combat Ship, make it "yuge" (and ineffective), and call it a Battleship.

Easy enough to parade around, make a big boom-boom show on a Tiger Cruise, then shuffle off and hide in Pearl Harbor until the namesake life form shuffles off the mortal coil, then scrap.

Their guns would fire on enemy positions during amphibious troop landings during the war. And there were a lot of those in the pacific as well as D Day. Battleships stayed in service until the end of the Cold War as their usefulness was eclipsed by more sophisticated systems and ships.

1.) Increasing the Trump Brand. "Trump Class" is in the dictionary defining "oxymoron."

2.) Grand Larceny. Multi-millions, perhaps even into the billions, "lost," "misspent," and otherwise unaccounted for---unless you're Trump's Swiss banker.

The abovementioned also applies to the "ballroom" (underground bunker).

The last battleship was built in the 1940s, HMS Vanguard

Read this article:

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships

Gives new meaning for the word "incoming" doesn't it?

And it is not the frigate that people are talking about, either. It is a heavily armed 40,000 ton class vessel, the design of which started long before Trump got involved. More like a large cruiser, but they gotta suck it up to Trump.

Whether a ship of that size is truly useful is unknown, but you'd best be sure China is working on something like it already. They are cranking out new ships and new designs like pancakes, while we debate over shipyard worker pay.

Our Navy has been decimated by poor leadership and stupid decisions for a couple of decades now, what with the (premature) cancellations, and poor planning of the LCS, the Zumwald and the ridiculous design mods of the Constellation class. The new frigate design is basically a small upgrade of the latest Coast Guard cutters, and will not be armed well enough to survive a day if open war reaks out with China.

The odds of this new class of ship ever getting built is somewhere between zero and an ice-cubes chance in hell.

He will make money off of this somehow.

carrier named after the late Sen. John McCain, a decorated naval veteran and national hero.

In reality it will turn out to be a scam with the money going into his pockets. Or a variation of the Kennedy Center, with the USS Trump-Iowa, The USS Trump-Missouri, and the USS-Trump-Texas.

because no matter how many hits it takes it will demand a recount and refuse to sink.

Sticking his name on everything is especially difficult to defend as it so plainly does little to meet the nation’s needs.

The personalization of government is advancing at ridiculous speeds:
- Trump-class battleships
- Trump’s name added to Kennedy Center, Institute for Peace
- legal-tender coin featuring Trump’s face (on both sides)
- Trump Gold Cards
- Trump Accounts
- F-47 fighter jets
- 47-day ICE training

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-12-23T14:04:44.654Z

He has no more screws to get loose.

This battleship makes no sense and will never be built

New battleships named after Trump are 'bomb magnets' — and will never sail: expert

www.rawstory.com/alternet-pos...

— (@bobshaw-28.bsky.social) 2025-12-26T21:50:29.523Z