On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled plans for a new “Trump-class” battleship, declaring it would be “the fastest, the biggest, and by far, 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.”
He hailed the ships as “some of the most lethal surface warfare ships,” promising they would “help maintain American military supremacy [and] inspire fear in America’s enemies all over the world.”
But there is one glaring problem: battleships have been obsolete for decades. The last was built more than 80 years ago, and the U.S. Navy retired the last Iowa-class ships nearly 30 years ago.
Once symbols of naval might with their massive guns, battleships have long since been eclipsed by aircraft carriers and modern destroyers armed with long-range missiles.
While labeling the new surface combatants as “battleships” could be a misnomer, defense experts say that there remain several gaps between Trump’s vision and modern naval warfare.
Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, dismissed the idea, writing in a Dec. 23 commentary that “there is little need for said discussion because this ship will never sail.”
He argued the program would take too long to design, cost far too much, and run counter to the Navy’s current strategy of distributed firepower.
“A future administration will cancel the program before the first ship hits the water,” Cancian said.
Bernard Loo, senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, described the proposal as “a prestige project more than anything else.”
He compared it to Japan’s World War II super-battleships Yamato and Musashi — the largest ever built — which were sunk by carrier-borne aircraft before playing a significant role in combat.
“Historically, we looked at battleships and the bigger the better… [and] in a very layman’s perspective of strategy, size matters,” Loo said.
He added that the size of the proposed battleship — displacing more than 35,000 tons and measuring over 840 feet, or a little over two football fields long — would make it a “bomb magnet.”
“The size and the prestige value of it all make it an even more tempting target, potentially for your adversary,” Loo said.
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, suggested Trump may be drawn to the symbolic power of battleships, which were the most visible icons of naval firepower for much of the 20th century.
The USS Missouri, completed in 1944 and the last U.S. battleship built, famously hosted Japan’s surrender in 1945.
Clark noted that the U.S. Navy recommissioned four World War II battleships in the 1980s as part of its 600-ship fleet expansion strategy during the Cold War to counter the Soviet Union. “This may be an era in which the president believes the U.S. last had naval supremacy.”
Battleships last saw combat in 1991, when retrofitted Iowa-class battleships provided shore bombardment fire support to coalition forces in the first Gulf War.
What’s in a name?
Clark noted that the classification matters less than the weapons a ship carries.
According to the U.S. Navy, the “Trump-class” battleship — part of a new “golden fleet” of warships — will be equipped with weapons such as conventional guns and missiles, as well as electronic rail guns and laser-based weaponry. It will also be able to carry nuclear and hypersonic missiles.
Such a vessel would essentially function like a large destroyer, regardless of whether it is called a battleship.
However, CSIS’ Cancian countered that such a design runs against the Navy’s distributed operations model, which seeks to reduce vulnerability by spreading firepower across many assets.
“This proposal would go in the other direction, building a small number of large, expensive, and potentially vulnerable assets,” he wrote.
Even if the “Trump-class” battleship proves technically feasible, analysts said cost would be the decisive obstacle.
Loo said U.S. weapons programs routinely exceed timelines and budgets.
The Navy’s Zumwalt‑class destroyers — the largest surface combatants currently at 15,000 tons — were reduced from 32 to three ships due to spiraling costs. More recently, the Constellation‑class frigate was cancelled due to design and workforce challenges.
Clark estimated the Trump‑class would cost two to three times more than today’s destroyers. With Arleigh‑Burke destroyers priced at about $2.7 billion each, that implies a single battleship could cost upwards of $8 billion.
The cost of crewing and maintaining them will put more pressure on an already strained Navy budget, he added.
RSIS Loo was more critical in his assessment, calling the decision a strategic mistake. “At the very least, as far as I’m concerned, it’s strategic hubris.”
Source: CNBC