Trump is expected to announce plans for a new Navy ‘battleship’
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is expected to unveil plans Monday to build a massive new warship that President Donald Trump has called a “battleship” as part of a larger vision to create a “Golden Fleet,” according to people familiar with the plans.
Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, who is now a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and is familiar with the discussions, said the announcement would include a new, large “surface warship class” ship and up to 50 support ships.
announcement It will come just a month after the Navy canceled plans to build a new, small warship due to mounting delays and cost overruns, deciding instead to use a modified version of the Coast Guard cutter that had been produced until recently.
Trump will be joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan in what was billed as a “major announcement” by the White House.
Trump plans to discuss a shipbuilding initiative, according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
It will be unveiled at Mar-a-Lago resort during Trump’s vacation Florida As U.S. forces take part in operations in the Caribbean that Trump says are aimed at stemming the flow of illicit drugs into the United States and beyond and increasing pressure on Venezuela The government of President Nicolás Maduro.
Montgomery said that while he supported the idea of building more support ships, he criticized the plan to build a new battleship-like warship.
Historically, the term warship referred to a very specific type of ship; A large, heavily armored ship armed with massive weapons designed to bombard other ships or land targets. Such ships were prominent during World War II, with the largest of the US battleships, the Iowa class, weighing around 60,000 tons.
After World War II, the role of the battleship in modern fleets rapidly declined in favor of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles. The US Navy modernized four Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s, adding modern radars as well as cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, but by the 1990s all four were decommissioned.
Trump has long had strong views on certain aspects of the Navy fleet, sometimes aiming to preserve outdated technology rather than modernize it.
During his first term, he unsuccessfully called for a return to steam-powered catapults to launch jets from the Navy’s newest aircraft carriers instead of the more modern electromagnetic system.
He also complained to Phelan about the appearance of Navy destroyers and condemned Navy ships being covered in rust.
Phelan told senators at his confirmation hearing that Trump “texted me many times very late at night, sometimes after one in the morning” and “about rusty ships or ships in the shipyard, asking me what I was doing about it.”
During his visit to a shipyard working on the Constellation class frigate, which was canceled in 2020, Trump said that he personally changed the design of the ship.
“I looked at it and said, ‘This is a terrible looking ship, let’s make it nice,'” Trump said at the time.
