Trump recently announced that the Navy will begin the construction of “two brand new, very large, the largest we’ve ever built battleships.” He claims that the new battleships, which he has named after himself, the Trump Class, will be “the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built, the largest battleship in the history of the world.” The first ship of the series is to be named USS Defiant.
No, not that USS Defiant
Presuming that Trump is not referring to one of two starships named USS Defiant in the Star Trek media franchise, then essentially, none of the claims about the proposed battleships are true. What Trump is trying to accomplish with this grand scheme, beyond wasting taxpayer dollars? Is it just another vanity project onto which he can affix his name? Or does he really believe that building a new class of ships considered obsolete for over 80 years is a good idea?
More distraction than shipbuilding?
Once again, Trump is saying the quiet part out loud. After giving a rambling, word salad of a speech announcing the battleships, Trump answered a reporter’s question about the Epstein files and effectively admitted that the battleship proposal was intended to distract from the deepening Epstein scandal.
However, first, a brief examination of why the Trump class battleships proposal is little more than an authoritarian fantasy by an individual who apparently knows very little about ships or naval strategy.
Before we proceed, a bit of fact-checking is in order. Trump’s claim that his super-battleship will be “the largest battleship in the history of the world” is flat-out wrong.
Not the largest battleship in the history of the world
The preliminary technical specifications provided by the Navy indicate that the Trump class displacement tonnage is approximately 35,000 tonnes. On a list of the world’s largest battleships, the Trump class ships would not make the list. If built, the Trump class would be approximately half the displacement of the Japanese Yamato class. They would also be only about 60% of the US Iowa class ships. They would also be somewhat smaller than battleships serving in the British, German, French, and Italian navies in World War II.
Not the fastest either
Regarding speed, instead of being the fastest, they would be just about as fast as historical battleships, although still somewhat slower than Iowa-class ships.
“By far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.” Not likely!
Trump also repeatedly claims that the new ships would be “by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.” This sounds like another of Trump’s fever dreams.
These “100 times more powerful” ships are not close to real. They have not been designed or fabricated. They exist as AI renderings from a low-budget video game featuring weapons systems that are still under development. Presumably, he bases this wild assertion on the new and powerful weapons systems that could potentially be installed on the ship. Potentially is the operative word, as most of these weapons have not been deployed on active-duty ships.
These weapons may eventually prove to be lethal and efficient. On the other hand, they may not work at all. The railgun drawn prominently on the battleship’s bow is a good example. The Navy has spent over a decade and a half billion dollars trying to get the electromagnetic gun to function before giving up and putting the program on pause in 2022.
Likewise, the Navy uses language reminiscent to that used to describe the Trump class to the Zumwalt-class destroyers, which they claimed was the largest and most technologically advanced surface combatant in the world.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in its review of the Zumwalt-class destroyer, found that only four out of twelve of the critical technologies in the ship’s design were fully mature. Six of the critical technologies were “approaching maturity”, but five of those would not be fully mature until after installation.
The destroyer was designed around its two Advanced Gun Systems (AGS), utilizing unique Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) ammunition. The cost of the ammunition turned out to be prohibitively expensive, however. The AGS were removed, and the destroyers were delivered without their primary weapon.
It was a distinct embarrassment for the ships presented as “the largest and most technologically advanced surface combatant in the world.” The Navy plans to install hyperonic missiles on the Zumwalt-class ships, assuming they can be made to work.
Claiming that a new battleship class with largely unproven high-tech weapons will be “by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built” is wildly over-promising and fundamentally silly, not unlike Trump himself.
How long would they take to build and at what cost?
According to Trump, the first battleship will be operational in two-and-a-half years. Trump wants to build 25 battleships in total at an estimated cost of from $5 — $15 billion each. His grandiose plans for golden battleships are in direct contrast to the recent Navy plan to build smaller surface combatant ships. Trump does not care about the Navy’s plans as long as he gets his way.
Trump’s two-and-a-half-year construction estimate is pure fantasy. In comparison, the first Ford-class aircraft carrier took over 15 years to build and cost $13 billion to complete. The Zumwalt class destroyers took over a decade to build, were six years behind schedule, and cost approximately $10 billion for each of the three ships. The Trump class ships are likely to take decades to design, build, and put into service, even assuming no major problems with weapons or propulsion.
Part of the problem facing the Trump class program is that the US shipbuilding base has diminished over time. There are shortages of facilities large enough to build battleships, as well as a skilled workforce to fabricate the ships. The resources required to build the battleships would put a significant burden on other Navy shipbuilding programs.
The US Navy shipbuilding needs immediate and extensive reform. Ex-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday acknowledged the seriousness of the problem, telling reporters, If the Navy continues its trend of major delays and cost overruns on new classes of ships, it could fall so far behind the modernization curve the fleet might not recover. The solution, the CNO said, is to make sure new technologies are thoroughly developed and matured before trying to integrate them onto a new class of ships — instead of packing unproven tech into equally unproven hulls.
Rushing into a massive fleet expansion plan to build expensive and complex battleships is exactly what the Navy doesn’t need to address its crisis in shipbuilding.
Why build obsolete ships?
So, why does Trump want to build obsolete ships?
In the waning days of World War II, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Yamato and Musashi were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships everever built, displacing almost 72,000 long tons fully loaded and armed with nine 460-millimetre (18.1″) main guns. Despite their size and power, battleships are vulnerable to attacks from the air or by submarine.
On October 24, 1944, the battleship Musashi was attacked by waves of over 250 U.S. carrier-based aircraft during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, receiving around 19 torpedo hits and 17 bomb hits before sinking after several hours.
On April 7, 1945, during Operation Ten-Go, the battleship Yamato was attacked by approximately 386 U.S. carrier-based aircraft (fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers) in two waves, ultimately leading to her sinking after receiving numerous torpedo and bomb hits.
Critics have suggested that the Trump class battleships, should they ever be built, would be “bomb magnets,” — slow, large, and easy targets, subject to attack by drones, submarines, rockets, and cruise missiles.
Lim Hui Jie writes that the ‘Trump-class’ battleship faces a large obstacle in its way: reality. He notes — Trump’s battleship plan clashes with decades of U.S. naval strategy and technology shifts, and even if it were technically feasible, the cost of building the battleship would be prohibitive.
Harrison Kass notes in 19fortyfive, President Trump’s proposed Trump-class “guided-missile battleship” (BBG(X)) is designed to be a headline-grabbing symbol of revived naval power, but it collides with how modern maritime combat actually works.
The concept is missile-centric—closer to an oversized destroyer than to a traditional armored battleship—and it would concentrate expensive capabilities into an obvious, high-priority target, making it vulnerable to submarines and missile salvos.
The plan also leans on still-maturing technologies like railguns and high-energy lasers.
Yet while the announcement gestures at real strategic anxieties, the Trump-class concept is incoherent, mainly historically regressive, and operationally misaligned with 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 contended 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.”
Tom Nichols describes Trump’s motivation for pushing this project as vanity branding. He is just ‘a 12-year-old talking about toys.’
The real reason Trump wants his battleships
To return to the original question. Why is Trump obsessed with macho toys? Is it all just vanity? Vanity certainly plays a role in all aspects of Trump’s narcissist hell-scape, but there is more.
Trump is noted for his propensity for spreading falsehoods. Nevertheless, sometimes he throws us all off by telling the truth. Jesse Dollemore catches Trump at just such a moment when Trump gives away the real reason for his battleships.
Lot of times when Donald Trump talks, he lets you know what’s going on inside his brain and what the the motivations are behind whatever he’s trying to distract from. It happens a lot. And yesterday it happened during his battleship announcement, his Trump class, USS Defiant.
During all of that, he let it be known exactly what’s going on here because toward the end of any press conference, once the canned remarks get said, um, reporters ask questions. And someone asked about the Epstein files. And he all but says literally, I mean, it’s it’s all that he has within him to not just say, “Wait, why are you still asking me Epstein questions? I thought this would provide me enough cover. I thought this would be a distraction enough that you wouldn’t have any more questions about Epstein.”
It’s a pretty remarkable thing. And remember, Donald Trump campaigned on releasing the Epstein files. And now he’s just perplexed. He just doesn’t understand why everybody’s asking about the Epstein files, the Democratic hoax, the scam perpetrated by Democrats, the thing he campaigned on, the thing his supporters were frothing at the mouth about, the thing he printed binders for right-wing conspiracy theorist influencers to parade around with. Epstein files phase one. Now he’s like, “Why are you guys still asking me questions? I’m trying to distract you with my Trump class battleships.”
Like for instance, today we’re building the biggest ships in the world, most powerful ships in the world, and they’re asking me questions about Jeffrey Epstein. I thought that was finished.
In the end, with Donald Trump, it always circles back to the Epstein files.