The “Trump-class” battleship faces a major obstacle: reality

On Monday, US President Donald Trump unveiled plans for a new “Trump-class” battleship, declaring it “the fastest, the largest and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.”

He greeted the ships as “some of the deadliest surface warships” and promised that they would “help maintain America’s military supremacy (and) instill fear in America’s enemies around the world.”

But there’s one glaring problem: Battleships have been outdated for decades. The last one 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 sea power with their massive cannons, battleships have long been eclipsed by aircraft carriers and modern destroyers with long-range missiles.

While it might be a misnomer to call the new surface combat ships “battleships,” defense experts say several gaps remain between Trump’s vision and modern naval warfare.

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, rejected the idea, writing in a Comment from December 23rd that “this discussion is hardly necessary because this ship will never sail.”

He claimed the program would take too long to develop, cost far too much and run counter to the Navy’s current distributed firepower strategy.

“A future administration will cancel the program before the first ship hits the water,” Cancian said.

Bernard Loo, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, described the proposal as “a prestige project more than anything else.”

He compared it to the Japanese World War II super battleships Yamato and Musashi – the largest ever built – which were sunk by carrier aircraft before playing a significant role in combat.

“In the past we’ve looked at battleships and the bigger the better… (and) from a layman’s strategic perspective, size matters,” Loo said.

He added that the size of the planned battleship – with a displacement of more than 35,000 tons and a length of more than 840 feet, or just over two football fields – would make it a “bomb magnet.”

“The size and prestige value of it all makes it an even more tempting target, potentially to your opponent,” Loo said.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, suggested that Trump might be drawn to the symbolic power of battleships, which were the most visible symbols of naval firepower throughout much of the 20th century.

Completed in 1944, the USS Missouri was the last U.S. battleship built and is famously the site of Japan’s surrender in 1945.

Clark pointed out 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 combat the Soviet Union. “This could be an era in which the president believes the U.S. has last had naval supremacy.”

Battleships last saw action in 1991, when upgraded Iowa-class battleships provided coastal bombardment support to coalition forces in the first Gulf War.

According to the US Navy, the Trump-class battleship is part of a new one “Golden Fleet” of warships – will be equipped with weapons such as conventional guns and missiles as well as electronic rail guns and laser-based weapons. It will also be capable of carrying nuclear and hypersonic missiles.

Such a ship would essentially function like a large destroyer, regardless of whether it is called a battleship.

But CSIS’s Cancian countered that such a design contradicts the Navy’s distributed operations model, which aims to reduce vulnerability by spreading firepower across many installations.

“This proposal would go in the other direction and create a small number of large, expensive and potentially vulnerable assets,” he wrote.

Even if the Trump-class battleship proves technically feasible, analysts say cost would be the key obstacle.

Loo said U.S. weapons programs regularly exceed schedules and budgets.

The Navy’s Zumwalt-class destroyer – currently the largest surface ships at 15,000 tons – were reduced from 32 to three ships due to rising costs. More recently, the Constellation-class frigate cancelled due to design and staffing challenges.

Clark estimated that the Trump class would cost two to three times more than today’s destroyers. With Arleigh Burke destroyers priced at about $2.7 billion apiece, that means a single battleship could cost more than $8 billion.

The cost of crewing and maintaining them would place even greater strain on the Navy’s already strained budget, he added.

RSIS’s Loo was more critical in his assessment, calling the decision a strategic mistake. “At least in my opinion it’s strategic hubris.”