No, it's not a battleship

130 pointsposted 11 hours ago
by hermitcrab
(navalgazing.net)

174 Comments

Animats

10 hours ago

It's all hype, as the article points out. "Battleship", it's not. No mention of armor. A battleship is supposed to be able to withstand a hit from its own primary weapon. The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers". They did not do well in WWI and WWII.[1] Nor did the armored battleships. No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack.

But they looked really cool.

Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships. Being near a hostile coast held by someone with modern weapons is death to a navy today. The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones.

[1] https://hmshood.org.uk/history/bcorigins.htm

[2] https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/china-s-df-27-miss...

JumpCrisscross

10 hours ago

> It's all hype

It’s geriatric hype. It tells you how the administration is thinking about the Navy: in terms someone born in the 1940s—and who never refreshed their assumptions since childhood—can understand.

What we should have are floating, automated drone-production platforms that can be mass manufactured themselves and shipped to right ahead of the front for overwhelming the enemy’s sea-based defences (while F-35s take care of SEAD). Instead we get Popeye with a rail gun.

SoftTalker

an hour ago

Mostly agree. Battleships were basically obsolete already by the end of WWII. We haven't built a new one since then.

treebeard901

4 hours ago

A submarine automated drone production and deployment platform would be as damaging to a Navy today as aircraft carriers were to battleships.

nickff

4 hours ago

Why would you want to produce drones from the same facility as you deploy them? You would terribly hinder each task.

Balgair

2 hours ago

It's a storage thing. You can make it so that the parts fit together better in pieces, then you assemble the pieces in theatre during deployment, so you have more drones in combat per mothership.

It's not like taking crude, cracking it, then refining the plastics, yadda yadda yadda. It's more an fast automated assembly thing.

krige

18 minutes ago

Inside of a submersible warship really is not the place to be conducting assembly of sensitive electronics, and just because you call it "fast automated" doesn't mean it's either of those enough to be feasible in combat situations.

XorNot

9 hours ago

The Arsenal ship concept[1] paired with the idea of "crew optional" ships would be inline with this idea and also integrate with the data link capabilities intended for the F35 (where it potentially fires missiles it's not carrying at targets it identifies).

The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so. Which is a massive advantage because it means if a ship is targeted it can still potentially service every single target in range before it's in any danger of actually being hit.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_ship

jasonwatkinspdx

8 hours ago

Yeah, and the reason the arsenal ship proposal been shot down time after time, by many nations, is because when you actually dig into it, it's a bad idea.

There's a minimum tonnage needed to mount a big enough radar, have a hanger for a helicopter, and plenty of room for VLS, RAM, etc.

But past that, it's better to distribute your assets across multiple vessels vs building one dramatically larger ship.

It's far better to have 4x Arleigh Burke style ships than one behemoth that's 4x the tonnage.

Heck, this was true even at the end of the battleship era. Just look at how useless the Yamato proved to be. And it's doubly true now in an era of very sophisticated anti ship missiles.

Also, conceiving of this in terms of single platforms is also just totally wrong. We assemble surface action groups with a mix of capabilities that match the situation. Some of our Burkes focus on anti aircraft warfare, other's anti submarine, so we send a mix. And when they're on station each hull can be in the location best suited to its task.

So really you have to think about the whole package, and the arsenal ship just doesn't offer anything desirable on that basis.

Animats

7 hours ago

> The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so.

And then it has to go back to base to reload. Reloading at sea is marginally possible. The U.S. Navy has demonstrated it recently, in harbor. But it's not done routinely with live ammo yet. This is a known weak point.

XorNot

7 hours ago

It's not clear when you would ever reload a conventional ships gun at sea either though, particularly on a modern transparent battle space.

It would still involve putting two or more ships in close proximity with heavy lift equipment for an extended time.

If this is close to the front it's a target, if it's not then you could reload VLS cells, and to do it your sacrificing the ability to put munitions on targets quickly which might just cost you the entire ship.

It's not even clear it saves you any reload time, since the only potential benefit is that shells are somewhat smaller then missiles, and even then once you account for magazine design and survivability I'd say the trade off is questionable at best.

zmgsabst

4 hours ago

You can helicopter shells and propellant onto the deck, then take them below for storage — as loading the guns from their magazines already happens.

VLS requires that you reload missile by missile at the place they’re fired from the top, which requires you have crane access to each VLS cell. You could replace the many non-reloadable tubes with fewer, reloadable tubes connected via loaders to magazines… but we’re starting down the path to re-inventing guns.

nradov

5 hours ago

The notion of a "crew optional" ship is a bit silly. It might have some utility for coastal defense: when it breaks down close to shore you can send a tugboat to tow it back. But I can't see how uncrewed surface vessels would be of much use to an expeditionary blue-water navy. Anything constantly exposed to salt water and vibration will break down. We're decades away from having robots that can do maintenance and repair.

jjk166

4 hours ago

Routine maintenance like cleaning, inspection, and consumables replacement is very easily automated. Breakdowns can easily be prevented with a combination of redundancy and preventative maintenance. Without a crew you can eliminate many systems that are necessary for sustaining a crew's long term presence which leaves a lot fewer failure points and a lot of room for redundant systems. With modular design you don't need an advanced robot that can fix an arbitrary problem, you just rip out whatever module contains the problem and replace it. It's unlikely on any given deployment that you'd run into a particular problem that can't be handled by an automated system and must be addressed prior to the next return to base, but if you did then telepresence robots, or a team flown over from a nearby ship in the battlegroup would likely be sufficient. If your ship is having a problem that is likely to cause the loss of the ship and a team of experts alone is not enough to fix it, do you really want to have more bodies on that ship?

nl

3 hours ago

People are cheaper than all that tech.

Unmanned drones make sense because they are more capable. That's not the case with most ships.

nradov

3 hours ago

Tell me you've never been on a boat without telling me you've never been on a boat.

krapp

10 hours ago

maybe... maybe we should stop electing these ancient white bastards whose brains fossilized back in the days of rotary phones and vacuum tubes. I don't know.

roughly

9 hours ago

Yeah but the other option was a chick

nsxwolf

4 minutes ago

Please consider that Republicans voted for Sarah Palin.

adastra22

3 hours ago

I know you being somewhat sarcastic, but the problem is the democrats put forward a checkbox-ticking uninspired candidate that had no business running for president - which I say based on her atrocious record in California and as VP. Her gender doesn’t factor into this.

Or in the case of Clinton, the party used undemocratic means to counter a political groundswell for a candidate they didn’t like, triggering an apathetic exit and no turnout for the most important voting bloc.

Most critically, the party seems utterly incapable of learning from these mistakes, and only doubles down on the worst decisions in the next election.

As it stands, we’d probably get a trans candidate (if there is one available) in the next presidential election. Which I’d want to celebrate.. but under present circumstances it would lead to an absolute electoral defeat. The Democratic Party leadership needs to learn to read the f$@!ing room, and put forward candidates with broad appeal.

JKCalhoun

2 hours ago

> the democrats put forward a checkbox-ticking uninspired candidate that had no business running for president

So you're saying the playfield was even. And the man still won.

adastra22

an hour ago

Bernie is the closer analog to Trump in the Democratic Party, at least for this comparison. Trump is not a checkbox filling candidate by any measure. He was the protest vote against the system.

fastball

2 hours ago

You might consider the field even for other reasons (which would make your comment something of a non-sequitur), but those adjectives certainly do not apply to Trump, regardless of what you think of the man and his politics. Trump very famously did not tick GOP checkboxes, and he has inspired a cultish following in a way that Clinton/Biden/Harris clearly cannot.

tialaramex

8 hours ago

I read an article shortly after Trump's first win which said that American women, especially the oldest remaining generation or so of voters did not believe a woman could be President, and so they were anti-Clinton in a way their comparable daughters were not.

At the time I found this an interesting comparison to the UK. In the UK my mother's generation (squarely in that same bracket) voted in Margaret Thatcher†, the "Iron Lady" and so they know a woman is no different from a man in terms of potential to lead. Which doesn't mean (see Liz Truss) better but also doesn't mean worse.

So in the UK you could definitely put a strong female leader at the top of the ticket and expect to get the same response, and in the US that seems likely in the future but it certainly counted against Clinton and even in 2028 it's probably a bad bet (assuming that is, that the US holds a meaningful presidential election in 2028)

† Thatcher isn't much liked, especially in some parts of the UK, but nobody is fooling themselves by thinking she was incompetent or ineffectual, they mostly thought she was bad which is different.

JKCalhoun

2 hours ago

It's been said for a long time that the first woman President of the United States would be conservative. The stated rationale was that voters would somehow see the conservativeness as cancelling out the "natural liberalness" of a woman.

Margaret Thatcher does not dispel that somewhat hackneyed notion. Nor do the last two women Democrats in the U.S. that ran.

nsxwolf

2 minutes ago

I would like you to please consider that we conservatives would vote for a conservative woman because she aligns with our values, not because something is "cancelling out" her woman-ness.

phantasmish

4 hours ago

Both of these two contests were really weird. Trump is an extremely unusual Republican. Hillary was someone Republican mouthpieces had been priming the electorate to vote against for the prior 20+ years. Kamala moved to the top of the ticket late in the race, in an odd move, replacing a candidate whose approval ratings had been in (historically speaking) “you will definitely lose” territory for months already.

Both races were pretty close despite this.

Also, I can tell you first hand that heartland, salt of the earth, common clay of the new west Republicans, the worst of the worst from democrats’ perspectives, loved Palin. Looooved her. She’d have done better among them than McCain. That’s among hardcore republicans. How the shit am I supposed to believe Hillary and Kamala being women is the reason they lost, given that?

I think the “lesson” of “well a woman just can’t win yet” is simply ignorant. It doesn’t fit what we’ve actually seen.

Loughla

3 hours ago

You're correct. That woman (Clinton) had no chance in winning, because Republicans had spent years hammering her in anticipation of her inevitable run, and many Democrats felt she was chosen before the primary, leading to much apathy. Had Harris had more time, she could've taken it.

Or, as you said, had the Republicans put up Palin, I think the world would look veery different today. I don't think there would've been as much of an appetite for the populist trump nonsense today.

But it's all essentially naval gazing.

FireBeyond

an hour ago

> and many Democrats felt she was chosen before the primary, leading to much apathy

Well, they would have a good reason to feel that, because Debbie Wasserman Schulz basically engineered it that way as head of the DNC, and what do you know, less than 24 hours after leaving that position was the head of Clinton's campaign.

There was no way the DNC leadership was going with Bernie, and leaked emails later confirmed that - they just said fuck you to their membership's preferences.

> Had Harris had more time

Not coincidentally, number one Google search on Election Day?

"Did Biden drop out?"

Very informed electorate...

throw0101c

3 hours ago

> Both races were pretty close despite this.

And Hillary Clinton did get more of the popular vote—not that it actually matters in America's cockamamie system: not enough votes were in the "correct" places.

rogerrogerr

2 hours ago

My gut feel has always been that removing the electoral college would hurt the blue team and help the red team. Logic:

The popular vote is basically split evenly today (the usual talking point, 2016, was 62,984,828 Trump, 65,853,514 Clinton). 2020 and 2024 had similarly small-ish margins.

So take 2016: if we’d had a normal election cycle, and then the day after voting said “hey guys let’s do this based on the popular vote!”, Clinton would have won. But that’s not how it would be; both sides would know of this change for at least the full election cycle.

So now you start with a roughly 50/50 split voting base, with many Democrat votes coming from big cities and many Republican votes from Middle Of Nowhere, Kansas.

You win the upcoming election by gaining votes.

Republicans go energize the voters in New York, LA, SF, Seattle, Austin, etc, who are not voting today because they (correctly) know their vote doesn’t matter. They maybe change some bit of their platform to appeal more the big city voters. They can pick up millions of votes in relatively few places.

Democrats have to go win votes from Middle Of Nowhere, Kansas. Or more accurately, 500 small towns in Kansas, to pick up a few hundred thousand votes. There isn’t nearly as much of a depressed Dem vote in red states, simply because red states have small populations (see “land doesn’t vote!”). It’s an exponentially harder problem. While Democrats are trying to convince Uncle Rupert that FOX is lying to him, Republicans are filling Madison Square Garden in NYC with closeted Republicans and telling them their vote will count for the first time ever.

I just don’t see how abolishing the electoral college doesn’t backfire on Democrats. How wrong am I?

3eb7988a1663

an hour ago

Today, people probably stay home in safe states - if you vote Democrat or Republican in California - you already know how the state is going to be called. Same can be said for Alabama. Why waste your time for a sure thing?

Some 65% of the population voted last time. Last cycle, there were some jokes about how only votes in the handful of battleground states mattered. A popular vote policy could activate a lot of non-voters who suddenly felt like their voice could have an impact on the result. How that would shake up, I am not sure. I have heard that most republican voters are already participating, there are significantly more democrats who stay home.

mr_toad

3 hours ago

Some of Britains most celebrated monarchs were women, so that might have some influence on how women in positions of power are regarded.

roughly

6 hours ago

Yeah, I think that after 2024 neither political party is likely to run a woman for president for the next generation at a minimum, and I think the voters agree.

(I don’t think that’s GOOD, mind you, but twice bitten)

adabyron

4 hours ago

I see no reason why both parties should not try.

Nikki Haley did very well in the primary against a more well known Ron DeSantis & Chris Christie. We have had multiple governors.

The only 2 that have run are not a good example.

A lot of people had strong opinions on Hillary that had nothing to do with her politics or leadership. A lot didn't want another 4-8 years of Clinton/Bush after 28 years depending on how you count Bush Sr. You could even add another 4 to that for Hillary's 4 yrs of influence as Secretary of State.

Harris wasn't popular in the primaries, many thought she wasn't deserving of the VP & she was part of an unpopular White House that was given a few ticking time bombs that they didn't properly diffuse. They also failed miserably to communicate with the public.

acdha

6 hours ago

I don’t think Democrats will. I did think there’s a non-trivial chance of an Ivanka ticket depending on how the family brand is doing by then. He’s used to thinking in terms of nepotism and his sons have the charisma of floor wax.

actionfromafar

5 hours ago

That’s very charitable. Floor wax has utility.

gorgoiler

3 hours ago

I blame the Primaries. The dogs choose the doggiest candidate and the cats choose the cattiest. The llamas and raccoons of Canidsas and Califelinia don’t even bother voting because the dog and cat candidates in these dog and cat voting states have always been and will continue to be in office term after term. The presidential race boils down to a handful of swing voters in purple Pettsylvania and Furrida.

AdieuToLogic

4 hours ago

Converting this sentence to singular form instead of plural seems apropos.

nradov

5 hours ago

US WWII battleships survived many determined air attacks in the Pacific Theater. They were heavily modified to carry more anti-aircraft cannons with huge supplies of ammunition. Improvements in radar, proximity fuses, fire control, and tactical doctrine proved to be extremely effective. Japanese kamikaze aircraft were conceptually similar to modern cruise missiles, just slower.

somat

39 minutes ago

So what would a guided missile battleship look like?

my guess would be trident sized(2m) silos as the main battery and you fill them with vls cells as a working battery. for armor It needs to be able to defend agenst it's own gun right, so that would probably be a bunch of missile defense systems.

It is often said that aircraft carriers replaced battleships but I don't think that is the case, I think aircraft carriers are kind of their own thing and the battleship role was actually replaced by ballistic missile submarines. Think about it, where are the big guns in the navy located? And the more tenuous but fun argument, look how the ships are named, battleships got state names, SSBN's got state names coincidence, I think not.

justin66

10 hours ago

> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships.

Not to mention China's attack submarines, with their own anti-ship missiles as well as old-fashioned torpedoes. They have proven their ability to pop up and say "hello!" to US warships in the past. [0] Getting that close wouldn't be as easy when everyone is on a wartime footing, but then again, US ships would be steaming right towards them...

[0] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2007/january/worl...

jasonwatkinspdx

8 hours ago

The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate, so in a hypothetical conflict, China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island, while also securing China's supply lines through Malacca.

Note this is one of the material motivations for the CCP gaining control over Taiwan. They'd quite like to move their submarine basing to the east side of the island as a practical matter. It's got deep water and plenty of cliffs/mountains suitable for hardened docks/shelters.

justin66

6 hours ago

> China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island

I agree that's generally true and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Thinking it through, though: if Japan is party to the conflict its naval assets are likely to be much closer to China, and China will need to keep some assets nearby in the East China Sea to honor the threat regardless.

To be honest the thing that's puzzled me about the Izumo-class ships since I read about them and the conversion they are undergoing to carry F-35Bs is where exactly they'd be safe to operate in a conflict against China. It's not like those planes have great range, and it's not like refueling is usually going to be an option, so if they're going to be put to use those ships are going to be in range of an awful lot of stuff. And what a juicy target for China.

> The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate

Is that true of China's smallest diesel-electric attack subs? I'd think the reason for them not to operate there would be a lack of targets.

edit: I take the latter part back. Apparently mine-laying in the straight by US submarines is hypothetically something that could happen in the conflict, and that would certainly constitute a target for China

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/december/you...

tw1984

4 hours ago

> The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate

Welcome to 2025. How about those unmanned submarines that can be made dirty cheap?

hermitcrab

10 hours ago

>The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers".

Do you mean 'battle cruisers'?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser

'Light cruisers' were different again.

>No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack.

Bismark was finished off by surface ships after the initial air attack.

Tirpitz took many sorties to sink.

The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower.

krige

10 minutes ago

The Bismark was also attacked by biplanes with defective torpedos (thankfully, that saved HMS Sheffield). Basically only two torpedos even hit the german battleship.

Presumably because the british torpedos were so awful, Tirpitz was attacked with regular bombs, which meant they were using the worst method of sinking a ship, from the top down, and so it didn't do much until they whipped out the ultra heavy ones. And it's not like the attacks were going poorly, Tirpitz was taking the hits because it could not kill the planes.

pfdietz

4 hours ago

> The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower.

In retrospect the Japanese got a bit lucky there; subsequent air attacks on battleships show they can be remarkably tough. Musashi took 19 torpedo and 17 bomb hits to sink.

mr_toad

2 hours ago

But these days you’re defending against the likes of squadrons of low flying B52s firing 20 (possibly nuclear) cruise missiles each. The bombers can fly back and re-arm much more quickly than any fleet, and there are a lot more bombers than ships. Add in submarines, destroyers and other platforms with even more missiles and I doubt any large ship or fleet will last long in any serious conflict.

nl

3 hours ago

Worth noting that the attack on the Bismarck was by biplane Gloucester gladiators which were outdated even at the start of the war.

Compare them to the planes that carried out attacks in the Pacific theatre. The Grumman Avenger was maybe 2 generations newer (and actually remained in service until the 1960s(

tw1984

4 hours ago

> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them.

truck-mounted? Are you on CCP's payroll to downplay and cover the rise of its military strength?

Chinese navy has YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile fitted on its Type-055 destroyers. At Mach 10 with 1,500km range, it is the most advanced anti ship missiles ever developed & deployed on the sea. YJ-20 itself is the ship-launched version of the YJ-21, which has been spotted on H-6 bombers for ages. With YJ-20 and YJ-21, you don't get to "coast of China" to experience their "truck-mounted" missiles.

Interestingly, you choose to ignore all these publicly available facts that can be easily verified and try to paint the Chinese navy as some 1980s forces relying on "truck-mounted missiles" for anti ship missions. Well done, you deserve a bonus for your strategic deception job!

andrewflnr

3 hours ago

Are you on the CIA's payroll to try to get CCP to waste money? I bet the truck mounted missiles are still cheaper. If they can service a target with a truck mounted missile instead of a Mach 10 missile, they'd be fools not to.

tw1984

35 minutes ago

care to explain how the US doesn't operate such super effective trucks? Trump doesn't like them? or maybe the kick backs are not as good as battleships?

jmward01

2 hours ago

There are, realistically, two basic conflicts that we could get into, one where we have naval and air supremacy and one where we don't. In the world where we have basically no real threat to our naval assets then go big and don't worry about the armor. In fact, just take a bunch of super tankers and throw on as many VLS modules on them as you can. Done. This ship isn't that, as the article points out. In the other war, one where we don't own the sea, then the idea of armor is basically silly and your best defenses are numbers and size. The littoral has grown far beyond line of sight and is arguably the entire world at this point given satellites and the reach of modern weapons. In that world you want a lot, so you can loose them, and you want them small, so that a loss isn't a big deal. This ship isn't that either. It reminds me of the Homer[1]. If your entire goal is to show up in port looking good then maybe, but I doubt this ship is good at that either. The first step to looking good in port is is just showing up so smaller ships doing more port visits probably gets that job done far better. But I am a fan of an inefficient military. It is hard to fight if you have terrible weapons so go ahead! Build a terrible ship and spend a lot of money doing it!

[1]: https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer

jghn

2 hours ago

> It reminds me of the Homer[1]

This was literally my first reaction when reading the description/seeing the picture

kcb

10 hours ago

The US navy is in freefall. The best we can do is build a 40 year old destroyer hull and an aircraft carrier class that we plan to be building for literally 100 years. Shipyards can't build anything. Every design is mismanaged so poorly and leached on by traitorous defense contractors so badly that we get essentially nothing but the bill.

russdill

an hour ago

Hulls last a really long time and the relevance of a large navy has changed. Keeping existing hulls up to date seems like a much better use of funds, no?

JumpCrisscross

10 hours ago

> best we can do

Why would you take this as an indication of the “best we can do”?

mpyne

10 hours ago

I think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best'. Theoretically we could be so much better, which is why everyone is so grumpy about U.S. shipbuilding.

For 'practical best' you'd normally point people to examples of warships the U.S. actually can build without much drama, but if you try this with the Navy you're basically left with, what, the last LPD class?

10 years ago you'd call the Virginia SSNs a success, but even those have now run into construction delays due to various issues, even as the Navy needs their #1 priority (Columbia-class SSBN, also delayed) to succeed to decommission the Ohios on time.

JumpCrisscross

9 hours ago

> think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best’

I guess I question this, too. This “battleship” a cartoon drawn for the President. It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.

There is a broader, genuine criticism of American warship building. But this battleship has as much to do with that as do rubber ducks.

mpyne

8 hours ago

> But it’s not reflective of our practical best.

Read the original comment they made again. They weren't talking about the proposed battleship at all, but about broader issues the U.S. Navy is already experiencing trying to build the already-approved designs.

> It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.

Indeed, it is beyond our current practical best, even if we assume the cartoon would ever be built. Which is, I suspect, what elicited the comment in the first place.

kcb

7 hours ago

Because this and further politicization just makes the decline even worse. This just caused the cancellation of the DDG(X), which I'm sure would have been its own boondoggle in time.

orwin

6 hours ago

The DDG(X) was the destroyer the US navy wanted to build no? I thought it was a nice concept on what a modern destroyer should do m, what was your issue with it (and it's cancelled now? For sure?)

kcb

6 hours ago

https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/436695...

> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.

Bratmon

5 hours ago

Because there's no secret group of competent people waiting in the wings.

The military-industrial complex we have is the only one we got.

jasonwatkinspdx

8 hours ago

Because US Navy procurement has been a disaster for over two decades now?

Just Zumwalt and LCS alone are like $50 billion burned up for nothing.

The Navy's issues with procurement go all the way back to the retiring of the Oliver Hazard Perry class without a suitable replacement in the pipeline.

jjk166

3 hours ago

One project becoming a boondoggle is evidence we're not living up to our potential. Every project becoming a boondoggle is evidence we are.

kcb

10 hours ago

I'm not saying its the best we should do. But its the best we are capable of doing.

amanaplanacanal

11 hours ago

It probably doesn't really matter, as this thing is never going to be built. I kind of suspect everybody is just going into "ok grandpa" mode until he loses interest and starts chasing some other half baked thing.

JumpCrisscross

11 hours ago

> It probably doesn't really matter

Millions—if not billions—of dollars are likely to be wasted on this over the coming years.

fastball

2 hours ago

Money isn't real. Yes, allocating funds to this means there is a large swath of the population (with accompanying hard resources) which would work on this when they could arguably be working more productively on something else. But would they be spending their time more productively? Keeping what little remains of our shipbuilding capacity on life support might actually be more productive than the alternatives, given how little of value the US seems to produce when it comes to heavy manufacturing.

"Spending billions" is meaningless concern until you ask the question: what would these people have been doing instead?

caconym_

4 hours ago

There's also potentially a substantial opportunity cost re: parity with China in the near to mid term even if we don't actually end up cancelling the next gen destroyer in favor of this thing: https://youtu.be/qvUbx9TvOwk

ourmandave

10 hours ago

At least the name Golden Fleet makes sense since everything the US military buys is priced like it's made of solid gold.

doom2

4 hours ago

It reminded me of Chinese style military naming conventions, which makes sense since for all the anti-China bluster, Trump seems to be a big admirer of the power Xi has.

krapp

10 hours ago

Don't worry - we're dismantling our science and research infrastructure and cutting welfare programs so it all evens out.

Havoc

10 hours ago

They're hard at work nuking the dollar too so maybe that doesn't matter anymore then

bruce511

2 hours ago

I mean, define "wasted"? Presumably money will flow to American companies, American employees, American steel industry and so on.

In other words, yes it is billions pushed back into the economy, and yes, there will likely be very little "permanent" to show for it (and presumably the navy won't be much better for it) but it's not like they're just burying the cash.

It's important to understand that for the military industrial complex the goal is to "feed the machine", not actually to produce anything. In that sense this money is not wasted, it's doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

api

10 hours ago

Not "wasted." Handed to allies of the administration. It's just naked kleptocracy.

I suspect that the "ball room" attachment to the White House will also still be a hole by the end of the administration, but a lot of money will get handed out.

actionfromafar

5 hours ago

That’s where the Trump dynasty will live in the future, in the bunker.

hermitcrab

10 hours ago

But think of the aesthetics!

tokai

10 hours ago

That super sized destroyer has non of the battleship aesthetics though.

hermitcrab

10 hours ago

Indeed. WW1 and WW2 battleships are incredible pieces of engineering and (IMHO) rather beautiful in their own way. And some of them were built in very short time frames when you consider they had no computers to design them with.

lostlogin

2 hours ago

It’s lucky the were pretty. They were outdated before the First World War.

krogenx

10 hours ago

Big “beautiful” bill comes to mind.

lostlogin

2 hours ago

Now the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’.

Even the name is flawed.

Analemma_

10 hours ago

As much as I love any opportunity to stick it to Trump, wasting billions of dollars is about the only thing the US Navy does anymore; in this case he's keeping them on-brand and on-mission. It's kind of hilarious they announced this at the same time as the Constellation-class getting canceled, just to make sure there's no chance the Navy goes even a single day without an active boondoggle of a ship which will never sail.

FuckButtons

10 hours ago

It doesn’t matter if you assume that large scale conventional conflict between the us navy and the plan over Taiwan is impossible in a world with strategic nuclear weapons, otherwise it very much does matter, because navies are built on the timescale of decades and the plans you make today very much determine the future you will live in 10/20 years from now.

mpyne

10 hours ago

Yes, the opportunity cost is the real problem with all of this. A navy takes approximately forever to build.

If we are extremely lucky the outcome of this will be increased shipyard capacity and refined shipbuilding practices just in time to switch back to building a multitude of actually-useful ships.

But most likely is that this ends up delaying the U.S.'s ability to build back its navy in time to matter, which is a tremendous issue given how we do our commerce and where some of our deepest friends are physically located.

FuckButtons

10 hours ago

If the navy diverts funds from the ddgx program for this, the usn goes from struggling to keep up with the plan’s expansion to being at risk of being completely outmatched in the late 2030’s / 40’s.

kcb

6 hours ago

It's over...

https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/436695...

> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.

I think there needs to be more awareness on how dire the navies situation is. Most Americans assume the 100s of Billions per year to the USN keeps us at some unparalleled level, but that doesn't seem likely to hold true.

jjk166

3 hours ago

Well before any "battleships" are built, we'd need to build up the infrastructure to actually produce them. This would presumably still be useful when the battleships get cancelled and we move onto a real program.

cosmicgadget

3 hours ago

That going to be next to the finished wall or next to the Foxconn megaplant?

duxup

9 hours ago

>On the whole, it’s pretty clearly a grab-bag of stuff that sounded cool, thrown together without any real attempt to explain how is this better spending an equivalent amount of money on Burkes or on the DDG(X) program, which was going to come in around 15,000 tons, and which this is allegedly supposed to replace.

Yeah it's an ego project for someone with a fragile ego.

bertili

10 hours ago

"The missile is too round at the top, it needs to be pointy. Round missiles are not scary"

- The Dictator

nuancebydefault

11 hours ago

So the trump admin is going something like a battleship. I would be surprised if they would be capable of doing that.

From what I have read and heard, they are much better at destroying existing functional structures than building functional things.

arjie

an hour ago

Ignoring all the practical considerations, the one thing I am positively in favour of is naming warships things which we can all believe in, so USS Defiance is great. I've always enjoyed the US submarines San Francisco and even District of Columbia, and the Chinese ships Liaoning and Nanchang, as an example. But my favourite names have to be the British names Formidable, Invincible, and Audacious. Now that I can get behind.

EdwardDiego

16 minutes ago

I mean, they literally named an entire class of ships when they launched HMS Dreadnought - and also caused previous classes of ships to be renamed to "pre-dreadnought".

But they've always had a flair for ship naming - Erebus and Terror, famous for Franklin's 3rd Expedition were originally bomb ships (that is, armed with mortars instead of cannon) of the Hecla class and Vesuvius class respectively, so firstly, naming mortar armed vessel classes after volcanoes, pretty cool.

But then check out the names of Erebus' sister ships...

* Hecla

* Fury

* Meteor

* Infernal

* Aetna

* Sulphur

* Vesuvius

* Devastation

* Volcano

* Beelzebub

You'd feel pretty badass serving on the HMS Devastation.

Fun fact - HMS Erebus took part in the Battle of Baltimore, so helped inspire that line from the US national anthem about "the bombs bursting in air"

ourmandave

10 hours ago

The spec on this piece of propaganda is the main battery is all missile systems. And the secondary is 5" guns, lasers, and a railgun.

The Navy stopped trying to install railguns back in 2021 but never stopped development.

I assume the lasers are future tech that sound cool, except this thing will be cancelled right after the next admin renames Dept of War back to DoD.

pron

10 hours ago

> right after the next admin renames Dept of War back to DoD

It's never actually been renamed. They just changed the stationery and website: https://www.usa.gov/agencies/u-s-department-of-defense.

Just like how Trump called in workers to put his name on the Kennedy Center building. Changing the name requires an act of Congress: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/76i

unethical_ban

an hour ago

Which is why I am ticked off every time someone at NPR calls it the Department of War.

ourmandave

9 hours ago

Wat?! But I've already cut off the tags on my new Dept of War swag and apparel!

At least I have the new updated globe with the renamed Gulf of America. They promised to send overlay stickers once Greenland and Canada become US states.

AnimalMuppet

10 hours ago

Lasers might be really useful if a ship is being attacked by a swarm of drones. (The part about hitting those drones may be future, though...)

uhoh-itsmaciek

11 hours ago

This is reminiscent of the Homer: https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer

nickff

10 hours ago

“The Homer” is best compared to the M2 Bradley, whose development process was described in the book (and later movie) “The Pentagon Wars”. Unfortunately, all large combat systems (most notably ships) tend to come with a grab bag of ‘features’ of varying utility.

iammjm

9 hours ago

Bradleys are actually very useful and likely best in their class as an infantry fighting vehicle.

nickff

8 hours ago

The M2 Bradley is an amazing vehicle, which does not accomplish the goals which its development program started with (basically a low-cost and reliable armored personnel carrier). This is why the M113 is still in service.

matkoniecz

3 hours ago

> whose development process was described in the book (and later movie) “The Pentagon Wars”

both of these are NOT documentaries, they wildly misrepresent reality and are basically fiction

XorNot

10 hours ago

The Bradley has performed very well in Ukraine, and the man who wrote that book is both a liar and crazy.

Read up on what his proposed alternative was.

hermitcrab

10 hours ago

>Read up on what his proposed alternative was.

Perhaps you could give a summary?

jasonwatkinspdx

8 hours ago

They may be referring to the campaign Burton waged against the Bradley's testing program.

Basically he wanted the Army to do a bunch of tests we already knew the outcome of: that the munitions in question would defeat the armor. This wasn't some sort of scandal or surprise to the pentagon. No armored vehicle is invincible, and the Bradley is already as heavily armored as is practical to cross bridges without them collapsing, etc.

Burton made a ton of enemies treating this like some sort of huge scandal he was uncovering, but in reality he was distorting the situation, then used it to popularize his book.

Basically he's just a grifter, but because he was saying contrarian things a bunch of people who had no idea what was actually happening bought into his bullshit.

It's similar to what happened with the "Fighter Mafia" where the public latched onto it without understanding how utterly bullshit the contrarian proposal actually was.

davidw

10 hours ago

It's going to be the "cybertruck of the seas" is what it's going to be if it's not quietly shelved when he gets distracted by some other thing that offends him.

nickff

10 hours ago

If you’re looking for a “cybertruck of the seas”, I think the Zumwalt class is a prime candidate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer

It had some potential, but that potential has been squandered, at great cost.

JoBrad

10 hours ago

The stats are crazy:

  In commission: 15 October 2016[3]
  Planned: 32
  Completed: 3
  Cancelled: 29
  Active: 2

trynumber9

3 hours ago

Similar "stats" to the Seawolf class.

Planned: 29 Completed: 3 Canceled: 26 Active: 3

Yet, unlike the Zumwalts, they are considered a good boat.

octorian

2 hours ago

The Seawolf was kinda the first attempt at a next generation attack sub while we were still figuring out the technology, making it far too expensive. But it led to the Virginia class, which has gone into mainstream production.

In some ways there's a similar situation with the F-22 vs F-35, though those two may have a bit more of a difference on roles and requirements.

cosmicgadget

3 hours ago

Couldn't he have just gone the F-47 and Kennedy Center route and just renamed an existing (/in development) thing?

erulabs

3 hours ago

Please be _appear weak when you are strong_

Please be _appear weak when you are strong_

Please be _appear weak when you are strong_

lostlogin

2 hours ago

Having watched him get out manoeuvred by the Chinese over sanctions, I don’t think forward planning is a strength.

hippo22

10 hours ago

Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles? It seems like, should a large-scale war happen again, it will look entirely different from the wars in the 20th century.

nickff

10 hours ago

Ships are the only way to transport and deploy certain weapons across theaters; as such, there is no simple way to replace them. Your argument could be made in the era of Soviet anti-ship cruise missiles (and that argument was made), yet navies have continued to develop and deploy warships.

hermitcrab

10 hours ago

Yes, but in an age of guided missiles, surely better to have 3x10k ton warship than 1x30k ton warship.

nickff

8 hours ago

That is unfortunately a complicated trade off, involving initial construction costs, total capability, maintainability, and crewing costs. Simply put, two amphibious assault ships do not equal or supersede one super-carrier.

jjk166

3 hours ago

A ship close enough to hit anything has always been close enough to be hit. Hypersonics are not revolutionary, countermeasures will evolve to address them the same way they have for every preceding weapon system. But ultimately, fleets need to be able to take a hit as they always have.

Havoc

10 hours ago

>Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?

Well China has been building aircraft carrier mockups on train rails in the desert to test something on them while they're in motion...so I'd say unclear

turtletontine

10 hours ago

Source?

Havoc

5 hours ago

You can Google it easily. Showed up on satellite photos

JumpCrisscross

10 hours ago

> Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?

Given 90s-era NATO air defences are shooting down Russia’s newest hypersonic missiles [1], I’m continuing to treat the category as more hype than utility.

[1] https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2024/11/20/ukraines-patrio...

AnimalMuppet

10 hours ago

China's hypersonics may work better than Russia's.

May. Or maybe the whole thing is just hype.

JumpCrisscross

9 hours ago

> China's hypersonics may work better than Russia's

They probably do. But absent positive profiling, it doesn’t make sense to design against a hypothetical super weapon.

jasonwatkinspdx

8 hours ago

You are quite confused.

Anticipating the future and developing counters/mitigations is at the very core of what pentagon planners do.

lostlogin

2 hours ago

> Anticipating the future and developing counters/mitigations is at the very core of what pentagon planners do.

Is this when they aren’t making pretty boats with pictures on the back?

Signs of excellent decision making are limited at this time.

XorNot

10 hours ago

That presumes no future innovation or improvement in defense systems.

Which with the way the US is being managed might be true, but generally there's no evidence that China has a missile which cannot be intercepted by refined means we already know.

maxglute

9 hours ago

Pretty much.

25% interception rate on shit tier Kinzhals last year, which allegedly required salvoing all 32 interceptors from patriot battery, a patriot pac3 mse, aka the most advanced operational variant from 10 years ago. It's dropped to 6% now after RU improvement.

Math basically saying ~10 kinzhals can overwhelm typical carrier group with couple flight3 Burkes assuming all Burke VLS was dedicated to ABM, which it's not. Extrapolate to a more performant PRC hypersonic, and interception rate might approach 0. There's nothing in US missile defense tests (staged ballistic trajectories / simple decoys) that remotely suggest they have capable interceptors or the magazine depth to survive even moderate amount of high end hypersonics. Which is going to proliferate, see PRC building $100k commodity hypersonics for potential floor. Bundle that with space ISR and expeditionary navy model is even more dead in 10-15 years.

Hence IMO it's rational USnavy modernization/recapitalization is such a shit show. US legislatively locked in 11 carrier navy with all the supporting surface fleet that entails. Shit needs to be built, by law, but there's nothing competent to build in face of AShM math, so keep grafting and fucking around. It's not like USN acquisitions wasn't shit fucked before Trump.

All of US MIC acquisition behavior makes sense if one accepts that navy is probably fucked (including subsurface), the only thing US really needs for hegemony (excluding PRC containment, which US functionally can't), is 100-200 B21s (naval tacair/rip f/a-xx likely also fucked) to bomb whatever mid sized countries they want with impunity without putting surface fleet at risk (imagine Houthis with hypersonics). Any legacy naval hulls, tacair frames with some modernization will still black magic overmatch vs everyone except PRC for peacetime dick measuring. TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else. So USN does whatever it wants, which includes a lot of flailing because it doesn't really know what to do at all.

r00f

4 hours ago

I don't think that taking interception rate as the only metric is fair. RU missiles have shown pretty low precision - and hitting a moving ship is much harder than hitting a stationary building, at least in my imagination.

maxglute

an hour ago

Yes, hence RU missile shit tier, they can hit point targets at least, which is step above IR missile that is dog shit tier, area spam. Maybe IR high end stuff RU tier if we can disambiguate the recent UAE hit that is statistically suggest low CEP point target capability.

For PRC missiles, see tandem missile demonstration a few years ago, two missiles launched from different launch sites coordinated to hit moving ship at sea. AKA PRC already have the ISR / kill chain to hit moving ships synced to time and space. Something basically no one else has demonstrated. Now extrapolate that out 10 years, while they (and US) are proliferating spaced based C4ISR = basically any surface fleet anywhere is dead, and even if we downgrade to only static targets, that means all US logistics, i.e. unrep are dead which leaves surface fleet single deployment assets. DDG barely has enough endurance for a few days of high tempo operations (fuel and weapons), carriers has endurance but without replenishment, no ammo, and without DDG escorts no protection.

ericmay

4 hours ago

> TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else.

Eh the USN can still maintain superiority outside of the South China Sea which means control of global trade. It’s not like it’s useless or anything even if the Taiwan straight turns into a dead zone or if the USN has to worry about missiles from the Chinese mainland. China also has to worry about missiles hitting their mainland industrial centers and naval facilities too.

maxglute

25 minutes ago

Look at DoDs China report last few years, specifically PRC fielded conventional strike. PRC DF26, H6xCJ20s already can hit every essential SLOC from Malacca to MENA at volume, DF27 reaches west coast and Europe. There isn't really anywhere except Atlantic (and south America) where USN can operate permissively, i.e. every shipping lane PRC needs (for energy in next 10 years) is already covered. As for missiles hitting mainland, we're really talking about attritional game, PRC A2D2 works as advertised and they can potentially blunt much of the fires from being deliverable to mainland, and there's also sheer scale asymmetry, i.e. PRC pouring more concrete in 10 years than US in past 100. That's just a stupendous amount of infra to break. Meanwhile DF27 can hit west coast, in a few years they'll have DF27+ that reach most of CONUS. The real question then is who can deliver more fires, can win attrition game, can reconstitute faster. And vs PRC, it may not be US considering they put so much fires generation on carriers that may not be able to deliver any munitions under PRC A2D2 and the 30-40 B21 replacement (we're talking 10 years out) barely replaces one carrier in fire power. Meanwhile PRC has global strike eggs is mostly in mainland based ICBMs that skips entire delivery vehicle middle man and can potentially hit CONUS and everything in between with high survivability. And ample surplus industry/construction sector to rebuild. The TLDR is once hemispheric hypersonic proliferates more, USN can't operate permissively in any of the theatres PRC really cares about.

But again that doesn't mean USN can't operate permissively vs literally anyone else, even on legacy platforms that still grossly overmatches every other adversary regardless of acquisition malpractice.

gherkinnn

10 hours ago

Related to the definition of Battleship for the fellow pedantic: What is a tank

https://acoup.blog/2022/05/06/collections-when-is-a-tank-not...

Less humorously, the proposed Trump class "Battleship" is what a teenage armchair general would dream up. The kind of person who thinks Ministry of War sounds cool and cosplays as his favourite operator.

csours

10 hours ago

"Trump Class Battleship" - absurd

"Gulf of America" - absurd

"Tariffs will reduce inflation" - absurd

"Trump Kennedy Center" - absurd

"Mexico will pay for the wall" - absurd

"Ukraine started the war" - absurd

"We'll make drugs 1500% cheaper" - absurd

---

Why does MAGA love absurdity so much?

hermitcrab

10 hours ago

Believing in the absurd is a test of loyalty to the regime.

PlunderBunny

9 hours ago

Perhaps for the same reason that conspiracy theorists need to ‘one-up’ each other - it’s a signal that you’re part of the group.

krapp

10 hours ago

They're authoritarians. Study fascism, or Nazism, or any authoritarian cult. All of them are absurd.

kevin_thibedeau

10 hours ago

We should christen it as a new class of ships: the dreadyep. With any luck, the gold encrustations will sink it when it is set afloat. Barring that, maybe some midshipman will "forget" to seal off a bilge port.

Xylakant

10 hours ago

A modern continuation of the Swedish Wasa class?

Havoc

10 hours ago

Yeah that's what the military youtubers are saying too...makes no sense

hermitcrab

10 hours ago

Unless the intention is to attract a lot of attention, in which case it makes perfect sense.

petersumskas

10 hours ago

Interesting read. Given what was covered and tradition notwithstanding, I think “Trump Class” (apart from being an oxymoron) is a perfect designation:

- oversized

- completely lacking in style

- not technically capable for the role it finds itself in!

iammjm

9 hours ago

I believe the designation you are looking for is “all-round fucking stupid”

throw-12-16

10 hours ago

Taiwan will be betrayed just like Ukraine.

duxup

9 hours ago

Despite Trump childish behavior, Ukraine is still getting a lot of weapons and money last I checked.

torlok

5 hours ago

How much is "a lot"? Trump has cut almost all aid since taking office. The EU is paying for the aid now. I'm assuming that the reason Zelensky cares to talk with Trump is for appearances, military intelligence, and to stall the restart of trade relations between US and Russia. The US has no real place at the negotiating table anymore. Everybody's just catering to Trump's ego, because it's the easiest way to stop him from doing any more harm.

throw-12-16

36 minutes ago

Not from the US.

Trump is a Russian asset and is earning his keep.

burnt-resistor

10 hours ago

Whatever this febrile dream vaporware could be, it's still way too big for modern combat. Don't take my word for it, listen to a US Navy Commander, a serious person obviously, explain how it's terrible and completely inattentive to real USN needs and doctrine. https://youtu.be/0Zqa9azGo6M

Moreover though, it's another facet of the show of the White House occupant embellishing their ego and playing the reality star part through random, aspirational concepts of a plan.

PS: I dislike almost all Republicans and most Democrats, especially all of the ones who take bribes from corporations and foreign governments, so this isn't a political message but a reality statement.

ourmandave

10 hours ago

If you want to know what the Navy was/is really planning look up the DDG(X).

A destroyer planned since 2021, hopefully it won't be another Ticonderoga class fuck up.

ianburrell

5 hours ago

The Navy also needs the Constellation class frigate. The proposed replacement based on the Legend class cutter. It is basically a corvette like LCS on a bigger hull. The Navy doesn't need more corvette, they need proper warships.

Red Sea shows that ships need more defenses now that anyone can build anti-ship missiles and drones. Maybe they should have called Constellation light destroyer and DDG(X) a cruiser.

pron

10 hours ago

As a non-American living across the pond, the thing that is most terrifying to me about Trump's presidency isn't his authoritarian tendencies, corruption, cruelty, or criminality. The world has seen plenty of leaders like that. Maybe not recently in so-called Western countries, but it happens. What's novel is his sheer idiocy. Calling him a moron is an insult to the intelligence of morons. And what's so terrifying about it isn't that a man so stupid was elected president of such a big and important country, although that's bad enough, but seeing American titans of industry and other members of its elite - people possessing real power - seriously discussing, or even praising, the quality of the emperor's new clothes.

AnimalMuppet

10 hours ago

It's always like this with authoritarians. They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often. They become the giver of power, and so those who want power do whatever they have to in order to get the big man to give it to them.

So the only surprises are 1) how fast this happened, and 2) that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.

pron

10 hours ago

> They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often

Yes, but they're rarely that stupid. The world sees a man say five times that he's lowered drug prices by 400-1500%. And that was just last week. For many Europeans it's remarkable to even come across a person that stupid.

> that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.

I never thought they were brilliant. I just thought they wouldn't sell themselves so cheaply or would be so easily intimidated.

iammjm

9 hours ago

Except that this particular authoritarian in question is likely intellectually unable to parse the truth, while also being completely uninterested in it

jasonwatkinspdx

11 hours ago

I mean the whole proposal is nothing more than some of Trump's staffers coming up with an image and a bullet list and him liking it.

The Navy is gonna slow role this thing till he's out of office then reform the plan. Which is insanely annoying to me as a tax payer as we've basically had 25 years of the Navy's procurement being an absolute disaster, and now we're gonna lost another 4+ years over Trump's idiotic showboating.

hermitcrab

10 hours ago

I guess some defense contractor paid to sit next to him at dinner. KA-CHING!

netsharc

10 hours ago

I wish SNL was currently on the air and made a hell of a joke out of that announcement...

Here's my sketch idea: Naval officers unveil the ship, but when they pull the curtains, they murmur that it's smaller than claimed (The ships will be bigger, faster and a hundred times more powerful than any previous US-built warship, according to Trump(1)). Stormy Daniels shows up and says "Oh yeah, he likes to brag, but it's more like a mushroom.".

Cut to the bridge of the ship, the navigation officer comes to the Captain and says "Sir, the ship can't navigate properly. It seems whatever coordinates we set it always wants to head to... Epstein Island!"

Then the radar officer says "Sir, we are picking up something on the radar. It's a big, it's long...". Cut to footage of a big, black, submarine. The Captain interrupts with "That must be the Obama-Class submarine! The biggest, baddest ship we've ever had!", and the crew look at it in awe.

Then Obama shows up and lectures the viewing public: "Impressive, huh? But in reality there's no Obama-class submarine. The legacy of leading the country should be measured by how it improved Americans' lives, not by the ships and ballrooms." (this message needs to be workshopped...)

Stormy Daniels reappears and says "I know which ship I'd rather be on (wink).". Then fade out the scene with the crew panickedly saying "Captain, the ship is losing power! It looks like it's falling asleep!".

(1) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/22/trump-new-na...