The Trump-class battleship faces a large obstacle in its way: reality

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

HE I saluted the ships As “some of the deadliest surface warships” that promise to “help maintain American military superiority” [and] “It strikes fear into 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But there’s one glaring problem: Battleships have been outdated for decades.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 about 30 years ago.

Battleships, once symbols of naval power with their massive guns, have been overshadowed by aircraft carriers and modern destroyers equipped with long-range missiles.

While it’s a misnomer to label the new surface combatants “battleships,” defense experts say there are still some gaps between Trump’s vision and modern naval warfare.

Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, rejected this idea in an article. 23 December comment “There is little need for that debate because this ship will never sail.”

He argued that the program would take too long to design, cost too much, and run counter to the Navy’s current firepower deployment strategy.

“The next 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, called the proposal “more of a prestigious project than anything else.”

He compared this to Japan’s World War II superbattleships Yamato and Musashi (the largest ever built), which were sunk by carrier aircraft before playing a significant role in the war.

“Historically we’ve looked at warships and the bigger the better… [and] From the perspective of a non-strategy expert, size matters. I mean, in reality size doesn’t always matter, but in this case it does for the average person,” Loo said.

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

“The size and prestige value of it all makes it potentially an even more attractive target for 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 for much of the 20th century.

Completed in 1944 and the last US battleship built, USS Missouri famously hosted the surrender of Japan in 1945.

The U.S. Navy recommissioned four warships from World War II in the 1980s as part of a 600-ship fleet expansion strategy to counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Clark noted. “This may be the last time the president believes the United States has naval superiority.”

The battleships last saw combat in 1991, when retrofitted Iowa-class battleships provided shore bombardment fire support to coalition forces in the First Gulf War.

According to the US Navy, the “Trump-class” warship that will be part of a new ship “golden fleet” there will be warships armed with weapons such as conventional weapons and missiles, as well as electronic rail guns and laser-based weapons. It will also be able to carry nuclear and hypersonic missiles.

Such a ship would essentially function like a large destroyer, regardless of whether it was called a battleship or not.

But CSIS’s Cancian disagreed, saying such a design runs counter to the Navy’s distributed operations model, which aims to reduce vulnerability by spreading firepower across many assets.

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

Even if a “Trump-class” battleship proves technically feasible, analysts said cost will be the decisive hurdle.

Loo said U.S. weapons programs routinely exceed timelines and budgets.

of the navy Zumwalt-class destroyers – currently the largest surface combatants at 15,000 tons – has been reduced from 32 ships to three ships due to rising costs. Recently Constellation class frigate canceled due to design and workforce challenges.

Clark estimated that the Trump class would cost two to three times as much as today’s destroyers. Arleigh‑Burke destroyers cost around $2.7 billion each, meaning a single warship could cost more than $8 billion; This does not include crew and maintenance costs.

He added that crew and maintenance costs would put further pressure on the already tight Navy budget.

RSIS Loo was more critical in his assessment, saying the decision was a strategic mistake. “This is strategic hubris, at least on my part.”