Battleships were largely obsolescent by the beginning of WW2. The new "Trump Class" ships, if actually built will

[artemisia1]

be drone and missile magnets. With crews of 1500-3000 sailors, the loss of life will be catastrophic if sunk in the Taiwan Strait by China. Just putting aside the ego portion of wanting to build "the biggest ships, the greatest ships" and naming them, of course, after himself, Trump is risking the lives of thousands of U.S. sailors. Agree?

https://apnews.com/article/trump-navy-golden-fleet-battleship-0940368b39b19f03abe8689ebad08380

[Silent Type]

1. Think battleships are obsolete too, mostly good for bullying foreign nations by putting them offshore. I do think

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."

[TheBlackAdder]

31. When the ship pummels the shore with shells, will that be a Trump Golden Shower?

[bluedigger]

2. They're not battleships, they're frigates.

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.

[Kaleva]

5. You might be confusing the new proposed frigate with this one

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

[bluedigger]

10. Perhaps so, and I still believe none of it.

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

[NickB79]

15. It's the DDGX program guided missile fleet upgrade

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

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

[Kaleva]

33. This will replace the proposed DDG(X) program

“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

[thought crime]

41. Trump's battleship is absurd and will never happen. Just comic relief.

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.

[Kaleva]

42. The FF(X) program looks promising

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

[thought crime]

43. Yes, it does.

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.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. He's the co-designer. He's said they will be "the biggest".

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

[jmowreader]

19. They're definitely not frigates

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.

[Girard442]

3. History is about to repeat itself.

The Swedish warship Vasa, capsized and sank in Stockholm Harbor in 1628, less than a mile into its maiden voyage due to severe design flaws (being top-heavy).

[msongs]

4. battleships were made obsolete Dec. 7, 1941 nt

[Celerity]

28. The Vasamuseet is one of the great places to visit here in Stockholm. 💛💙🇸🇪

https://www.vasamuseet.se/en

[sarisataka]

7. What is being proposed is not really a battleship

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

[artemisia1]

11. 35,000 tons for "Trump" Class vs. 57,000 tons for the WW2 Iowa Class Battleships. You are right. Battlecruiser

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

[Jack Valentino]

24. And far short of the 70,000 tons Yamato and Musashi Japanese battleships, which were ACTUALLY

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

[Emile]

8. So basically this class is a guided missile cruiser,

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

[artemisia1]

9. Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse 10 December 1941. When it was discovered that even battle ready

battleships and battlecruisers were vulnerable to air power:

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

[haele]

13. Extremely expensive and will take years to design.

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.

[Beartracks]

27. Something else for the next reality-based President to have to cancel.

[artemisia1]

38. After billions are wasted. /nt

[SocialDemocrat61]

14. Battleships were very useful in WWII

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.

[ColoringFool]

16. These Ships Aren't About Battle! They Will Be For 2 Things:

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).

[Jacson6]

17. N. Korea built a battleship recently. It sank when they tried to launch it. n/t

[sarisataka]

21. It was a destroyer that NK tried to launch

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

[chowder66]

18. If they do build them then can we put him and his administration on them and send them to Caribbean waters?

[AverageOldGuy]

20. The US is not capable of building these ships

Read this article:

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

For those of us worried about America’s ability to manufacture things, there’s no shortage of worrying indicators to point to. Manufacturing employment has fallen by a third from its peak in 1979, even as the population has grown by nearly 50% over the same period. Storied manufacturing companies like Boeing and Intel are struggling. From machine tools to industrial robots to consumer electronics, the list of American industries where manufacturing capability has been hollowed out is long.

Another worrying indicator is shipbuilding capacity. Commercial shipbuilding in the U.S. is virtually nonexistent: in 2022, the U.S. built just five oceangoing commercial ships, compared to China’s 1,794 and South Korea’s 734. The U.S. Navy estimates that China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times our own. It costs roughly twice as much to build a ship in the U.S. as it does elsewhere. The commercial shipbuilders that do exist only survive thanks to protectionist laws like the Jones Act, which serve to prop up an industry which is uncompetitive internationally. As a result, the U.S. annually imports over 4 trillion dollars worth of goods, 40% of which are delivered by ship (more than by any other mode of transportation), but those ships are overwhelmingly built elsewhere.

[littlemissmartypants]

22. Make way for another G R I F T....

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

[relayerbob]

23. The ship being proposed is not a "battleship" in the classic sense

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.

[Jack Valentino]

25. Trump's understanding of the term 'battleship' likely begins with 'a row-boat with shotguns'

[artemisia1]

35. Agreed. /nt

[Irish_Dem]

26. It's ego and grift.

He will make money off of this somehow.

[oasis]

29. I hope Trump lives long enough to see a aircraft

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

[YepYep]

30. Yes!

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.

[Turbineguy]

32. Trump Class in honor of Epstein.

[yaesu]

34. To be fair the tRump class will be AI controlled making it unsinkable

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

[PCIntern]

36. ...and it does not identify as being sunk.

[OLDMDDEM]

37. He doesn't care if they are obsolete. It's all about him, not the ship.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

39. MaddowBlog-Trump names battleship class after himself, advancing his personalization crusade

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

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-names-battleship-class-after-himself-advancing-his-personalization-crusade

It’s hardly a secret that Donald Trump desperately wants to apply his name to things, but the president cares nearly as much about adding the word “gold” to assorted labels. Just in the course of the past year, for example, we’ve seen him emphasize everything from “Gold Cards” to a “Golden Dome” to a “Golden Age” for the nation. (Never mind the shiny curlicues he’s slapped up all over the Oval Office.)

Once in a great while, though, the Republican finds a way to check both boxes simultaneously. My MS NOW colleague Erum Salam reported:

The United States will build new ‘Trump-class’ battleships as part of a ‘Golden Fleet,’ President Donald Trump announced Monday. […]

‘They’ll be the fastest, the biggest and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,’ Trump said at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. He was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Navy Secretary John Phelan and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

So, on the one hand, we’re talking about a fleet that joins the president’s “golden” list while, on the other, Trump is also naming a class of battleships after himself. The White House promoted illustrations of the unbuilt ships featuring an emblem that centers Trump with a raised fist — a detail that reinforces concerns that this is less about national security and more about self-aggrandizement and self-glorification on the part of the president.

Trump Class battleship illustration, as released by the White House.

— Steve Herman (@newsguy.bsky.social) 2025-12-22T22:55:14.884Z

For those keeping score, Trump and his allies have now applied his name to the Kennedy Center and the Institute of Peace, unveiled a commemorative legal-tender coin that that will feature his face on both sides and launched “Trump Gold Cards” and “Trump Accounts.” By some accounts, the president wants the upcoming White House ballroom to be named after him, too.

But wait, there’s more. Trump wants a football stadium in the nation’s capital to be named after him; the nation’s next-generation fighter jet will have an F-47 designation in honor of him (he is the nation’s 47th president); and training for incoming Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents was reduced from 50 days to 47 days for the same reason.

We are witnessing the personalization of the American government in real time, and it’s advancing at ridiculous speeds (and in ridiculous directions).....

Montgomery said the new frigate has “zero tactical use” and that officials appear to be “focused on the president’s visual that a battleship is a cool-looking ship.”

This isn’t how a global superpower is supposed to function. The administration’s plan is moving forward anyway.

[spanone]

40. get the net!!!!

He has no more screws to get loose.