President Donald Trump, days before Christmas, announced a new generation of “Trump Class” battleships for what he called a future “Golden Fleet” of U.S. Navy ships.
The construction of the first two vessels will start “almost immediately,” with plans to expand to a fleet of 20 to 25, the Navy Times reported.
The first ship, named the USS Defiant, will carry nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons, electromagnetic railguns and directed energy weapons.
Reacting to the announcement, retired Navy commander Kirk Lippold said plans of a “Golden Fleet” of new ships reminds him of President Reagan's space-based plan, the Strategic Space Initiative. That plan, nicknamed “Star Wars” at the time, was meant to counter a future nuclear attack from the Soviet Union.
“President Trump, quite frankly, has correctly assessed the threat that China represents to the world,” Lippold told American Family News.
China, which views America as a military adversary, is famously outpacing the U.S. Navy in new naval vessels for its People’s Liberation Army-Navy, or PLAN.
China’s modernization plan has a goal to construct 460 ships by 2030, a plan that dates back 25 years, AFN reported back in a 2022 story. That story described a report from the Congressional Research Service, a public policy institute, that warned Capitol Hill of China’s naval capabilities in the Pacific Ocean.
Although the Navy Times article did not weigh the feasibility of a modern-day battleship, an article at Military.com flatly called it an unnecessary, dangerous, and expensive plan for the U.S. Navy to undertake. A modern-day U.S. navy guided-missile destroyer can perform the same duties with half the crew, the article said, and the history of WW 2 is a lesson about the vulnerability of the massive ships to aircraft and missiles.
The last U.S. battleship constructed was the USS Missouri. It was built during WW 2 and decommissioned in 1992.
In modern naval warfare, the aircraft carrier has replaced the battleship as the most dangerous and capable ship on the high seas. The U.S. Navy currently has 11 carriers compared to three carriers maintained by China.
Lippold, who did not tell share his opinion of bringing back modern-day battleships, said the U.S. must get on a “war footing” against China to challenge its regional dominance in the Pacific.
