War New ‘Trump-Class’ Navy Warships Named After President: What to Know

President Donald Trump announced plans Monday for a new class of large Navy warships bearing his name.

The so-called “Trump-class” ships would be described as battleships, though officials say they would be next-generation surface combatants built on technology derived from the Navy’s existing Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. Retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, now a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Associated Press the announcement is expected to include a new, large surface combatant class of ship and up to 50 support vessels.

The White House is framing the move as a centerpiece of Trump's vision for a revamped “Golden Fleet."

...
The president was joined Monday at Mar-a-Lago by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan for what the White House called a “major announcement.”

The announcement follows renewed White House pressure to expand U.S. shipbuilding after the Navy recently scrapped plans for a smaller warship amid cost overruns and delays.

The plan is being unveiled at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort as he vacations in Florida and as U.S. forces conduct operations in the Caribbean that the administration says are aimed at disrupting drug trafficking and increasing pressure on Venezuela’s government. Retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery said he supports expanding the fleet with additional support ships but questioned the need for a new battleship-like vessel.

Historically, the term battleship has referred to large, heavily armored ships armed with massive guns, a class that peaked in prominence during World War II. The role of such ships declined rapidly after the war as aircraft carriers and long-range missiles became dominant, and the Navy decommissioned its last Iowa-class battleships in the 1990s after briefly modernizing them in the 1980s.

Trump has long expressed strong views about the Navy’s fleet, at times favoring older technologies. During his first term, he unsuccessfully pushed to return to steam-powered catapults on aircraft carriers and has repeatedly criticized the appearance of Navy ships, including complaints about rust.

Navy Secretary John Phelan has told senators that Trump has frequently texted him late at night about ship maintenance and design, and Trump has previously said he personally intervened to alter the design of a now-canceled frigate, calling the original version “a terrible-looking ship.”


...
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.

This article includes reporting by the Associated Press.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/C45kn

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-battleships-us-navy-pete-hegseth-11256267

 

[The Cringe Connoisseur]

Trump class. So it's a massive slow piece of shit with an obnoxiously loud inefficient engine, weak weapons, an incompetent unqualified crew made up of professional ass kissers and it never does or accomplishes what people say it will and it's decorated by someone with horrible tacky taste?

 

[mindlessobserver]

Trump class. So it's a massive slow piece of shit with an obnoxiously loud inefficient engine, weak weapons, an incompetent unqualified crew made up of professional ass kissers and it never does or accomplishes what people say it will and it's decorated by someone with horrible tacky taste?

That's the branding. The proposed lead ship is USS Defiant, so it would be the Defiant Class, not the Trump Class.

 

[Snekposter]

This feels like 50% ego, 50% trolling. Like "Here, talk about this and get all worked up."

I give it 50/50 odds this is a Maximum Battleship situation with the Navy doing this just to shut him up or he actually has come up with the perfect new ship concept simply because everyone else was too timid to get out there and give the envelope a much-needed push.

USS Defiant

Today is a good day to die!

 

[OG Swolemaster]

The aircraft ARE the Guns on a carrier. They are a hundred mobile little missile carriers that project power exponentially off a single platform, and since they have human pilots are capable of greater utility then a single tube launched missile.

Obligatory anti-BBnigger image

 

[The Big A]

Nah, this shit isn't ever being built. Surface combatants close enough to their targets to engage them are sitting ducks to anything on land. The whole point of having aircraft carriers is to lob missiles at long enough ranges as to avoid enemy surface based missiles, and if you can't risk that, then at least have submarines where the enemy doesn't even know it's there until missiles have already been fired.

I love the Kirovs, but building a modern version of those is like building a new Battleship in 1960, very cool, but not very useful,

 

[Fanatical Pragmatist]

Sci fi bullshit promoted by hostile enemy nations to weaken America.

To be fair, "yeah bro, just sail your billion dollar ship staffed with thousands of USN personnel into fucking gun range of the Chinese coast, it'll be fine bro!" is a narrative that would also plausibly be promoted by hostile powers.

I fully understand that a single anti ship missile can take down the largest most heavily armed surface ship today, however there is still a place for guns in naval combat. Guns can destroy coastal targets at a fraction of the cost of missiles. Im also not aware of air defense missiles or other defensive weapons being able to stop projectiles from a naval gun. Yes it takes alot more hits from a 5" gun so maybe that's why a larger gun is needed or our vessels.

At best you've made the argument for fast, cheap and expendable USV's with a mass-produced caliber shell (i.e. 105mm or 155mm).

Even then you'd still need serious suppression of 1) enemy air capabilites, 2) enemy ground-based anti-ship, 3) enemy artillery (after all, if you are in gun range of the enemy, then they are within gun range of you) and of course as the Russian-Ukrainian War has taught us 4) anti-ship drones

Even then, giving how few would actually survive the gauntlet to get into gun range and the total cost of building an "expendable" vessel you'd probably be better off just paying the $500k to fire a cruise missile anyways.

Also what does a modern warship do when its out of missles?

Falls back to port and lives to fight another day.

Modern naval combat in a peer vs peer or even near-peer war is going to mostly hit-and-run attacks by surface ships until one side gains air dominance.

This is also pretty much what we've seen in the Russian-Ukrainian War, with the Black Sea Fleet largely maneuvering at-speed, getting into Kalibr cruise missile range of their targets, firing and turning around and booking it back to port before retaliatory counter-strikes can ensue.

In all honesty I dont understand why the carriers dont just become the main warships with offensive guns installed on them. Heavily armed carriers with offensive weapons defended by a swarm of smaller destroyers and cruisers would appear to work. Think of a carrier as a Star Destroyer.

Because a carrier, especially for the US, is a major keystone of strategic power.
It's not just a "symbol", it's a literal floating bubble of 1) fighter screen and 2) airborne ISTAR.
Lose the carrier, and the other surface ships now become sitting ducks vulnerable to constant attacks from "under the radar".

A carrier should be operating well over 200 miles away from any peer adversary at least, if not further out for good measure.

If an admiral ever lets that thing get into gun range of an enemy target, they've already fucked up massively - to say nothing of the suicidal lunacy to risk an asset like a carrier. This would be a massive, massive defeat for the US and pretty much an instant mission-kill of the entire fleet save submarines. To say nothing of somewhere like France or China*, where they really have 1 CATOBAR carrier each, so killing that thing basically kills future power projection hopes.

Obligatory anti-BBnigger image
Wyświetl załącznik 8320910

That's like the second-smallest of the bomb classes, too.

 

[Snekposter]

Obligatory anti-BBnigger image
Wyświetl załącznik 8320910

Why don't you pick something fair, like a contemporary AP bomb intended for naval strikes instead of a modern general purpose bomb?

Whoops, never mind.

 

[Orkeosaurus]

I fucking hate how every new hull looks like the polygons didn't render properly.

 

[indomitable snowman]

If I was president instead of wasting money on something stupid like this I would use it to do something cool like making Master Chief real.

Hey Biden was the one kidnapping 6 year olds and sniffing them to see if they could survive the augmentations.

 

[Snekposter]

Hey Biden was the one kidnapping 6 year olds and sniffing them to see if they could survive the augmentations.

If Donald Trump's making anything real it's catgirls. Why else would Elon be so tight with his administration, space rockets and electric cars?

I THINK NOT.

 

[mindlessobserver]

A carrier should be operating well over 200 miles away from any peer adversary at least, if not further out for good measure.

The more I think about it though, the more I am thinking a nuclear powered battleship with a fuck ton of SAM batteries, rail guns and anti drone lasers is the perfect escort for a Carrier. The Battleship is the "Ship of the Line" that forms the wall of naval gunfire. We can't put a nuclear reactor on a destroyer. A destroyer is not going to protect the carrier from ballistic missiles, drone swarms and the multitude of developing threats modern warfare is ginning up for the core of the US Fleet.

But two nuclear powered battleships with multiple launch tubes for RIM-161 missiles, electronic warfare suites, anti drone guns, and possibly even a rail gun (eventually)? running port and starboard to the carrier? Now that is a wall of defense to the core of US Naval Doctrine and a solid counter to China's obvious strategy of targeting the carrier with overwhelming strategic attack.

 

[Curzon Dax-sama]

So, they're actually building the pimp hand. Based and Sisko-pilled.

 

[Gay Sex Enjoyer]

So long as it blows up our enemies and looks cool, I don't care. We already spend a quintillion dollars on everyone else's military, might as well splurge.

 

[Fishmalk Observer]

Trump class. So it's a massive slow piece of shit with an obnoxiously loud inefficient engine, weak weapons, an incompetent unqualified crew made up of professional ass kissers and it never does or accomplishes what people say it will and it's decorated by someone with horrible tacky taste?

Yes, and it makes subhumans like the chinese and you shit themselves in rage.

 

[Yet Another Wanker]

How the hell is the Navy gonna miniaturize a presumably nuclear reactor to power this space laser of doom and the magnets for the rail gun. Children die on potholed streets for this shit. Death to America really is just the motto of all civilized people at this point. And it's not me being a leftist weirdo Biden did in all my patriotism there's just no point in trying to recover from this shit this is Rome after Adrianople it's so over.

Don't think you have read much history. https://youtube.com/watch?v=sPlSH6n37ts

Trump's more of Auden's Epithet to a Tyrant or Elliot's Hollow Man

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

...This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

Ceterum autem censeo Americaemesse delendam

 

[Gay Sex Enjoyer]

Nigga it's just a new ship class

 

[Robbyretard]

How the hell is the Navy gonna miniaturize a presumably nuclear reactor to power this space laser of doom and the magnets for the rail gun. Children die on potholed streets for this shit. Death to America really is just the motto of all civilized people at this point. And it's not me being a leftist weirdo Biden did in all my patriotism there's just no point in trying to recover from this shit this is Rome after Adrianople it's so over.

Trump's more of Auden's Epithet to a Tyrant or Elliot's Hollow Man

https://youtube.com/watch?v=C2dixTRE2GA

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WAWaZqDf-VE


Ceterum autem censeo Americaemesse delendam

She was talking about how he want to put his name on everything, and it seem strange. I said she had not read history. There are so many men in history, who tried to stamp their name in it, it not only a meme, it also a POEM.

 

[Scale Smerch]

With respect to a "Battleship" in the modern context, the chassis is useful as a platform for a nuclear reactor that can make the thing go stupid fast if needed, or power next generation rail guns and anti-drone laser weapons if they are ever developed. Its utility as a missile launcher is less ideal. A Submarine is a better missile boat because its stealthy and doesn't paint a fuck huge target on its back.

Pretty much this, at least until SMRs are figured out. The main restriction on modern naval development is energy supply at this point since cruise missiles are a solved problem and the answers to current anti-missile defense exist in theory.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Pretty much this, at least until SMRs are figured out. The main restriction on modern naval development is energy supply at this point since cruise missiles are a solved problem and the answers to current anti-missile defense exist in theory.

Which is why I am going to be cautiously hype on the USS Defiant, provided of course the Navy actually builds the platform for what it needs to do. Its not an offensive weapon. Its the ship of the line. The wall of steel between the carrier and the threats that are coming for it.

I am not buying the hype about drone swarms and hypersonic ballistic missiles being able to take out carriers right now, but that is where warfare tech is going. The Carrier by its nature cannot have the necessary defense equipment to stand off drone swarms, missiles coming in from orbit or mass rocket barrages. It needs to focus on launching air craft. Destroyers and cruisers are likewise not suited for point defense at close range because of the need for them being dual use.

A Battleship on the other hand, CAN defend the carrier from these threats. Provided it is designed for the role. Trump may be seeking a vanity project here, but its the kind of vanity project that can produce the outside context warship that the US Navy absolutely does need.

 

[Million Dollar Word]

Bigger is better in warfare.

What? This isn't even remotely close to being true. We don't even have to look that far back in history to see a comparative example as to where this line of thinking gets you.