Trump breaks convention and logic with proposed new battleship
The US Great White Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbor in August 1908 and nearly the entire city gathered to salute the ships. There were parades and balls and parties when we first fell under America’s seductive sense of power.
The fleet had circumnavigated the globe to announce the arrival of the United States as the world naval power, and now President Donald Trump plans to sail after Theodore Roosevelt.
What the planned new Trump-class battleship should look like – if all goes as plannedCredit: access point
Trump announced that the United States would commission a new series of heavily armed “battleships” bearing his name as part of a revamped “Golden Fleet” aimed at expanding the U.S. Navy to keep up with China. “It will help maintain American military superiority, revitalize the American shipbuilding industry, and strike fear into America’s enemies around the world,” Trump said.
He boasted that the new class of warships would be 100 times more powerful than previous warships and larger than any other surface combatant in the oceans. He criticized existing warships as ugly, apparently unaware that his designs reflected radar, and discussed aesthetics as a criterion for US Navy design teams.
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Trump, who has long admired battleships, could not resist his passion for branding himself in favorite projects. However, naming the new ships “Trump class” breaks the news naming conventionsincluding not naming ships after living people.
But he needed to float something big to create the impression that both American industry and its military were ready to reassert hegemony on the high seas.
The United States is significantly weakened as a naval power Although there have been difficulties rebuilding since the 1940s, the fleet has weakened and currently numbers around 300 ships. For the first time in living memory, the United States faces a serious rival for maritime dominance in the People’s Republic of China. Beijing has moved to fill this gap, and with nearly 400 ships, China’s navy is now the largest in the world. Not only that, nearly 60 percent of worldwide orders now go to Chinese shipyards.
However, the Trump-class warship has a major reliability problem.
