Um, Fleet
Donald Trump is obsessed with putting his name on things. Preferably in gold, The Wall Street Journal notes, even when he’s not legally allowed. Trump did that last week when he defaced the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts by adding his name over Kennedy’s above the entrance.
But new battleships “with frickin’ laser beams”? Oh, much more powerful, more massive extensions of his manhood. And longer, naturally. Even if the weapons don’t work.
First question: What investments does the Trump family have in shipbuilding ventures?
The Associated Press reports that Trump means to build a new class of “battleship” named for himself:
President Donald Trump has announced a bold plan for the Navy to build a new, large warship that he is calling a “battleship” as part of a larger vision to create a “Golden Fleet.”
“They’ll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump claimed during the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
According to Trump, the ship, the first of which will be named the USS Defiant, will be longer and larger than the World War II-era Iowa-class battleships and will be armed with hypersonic missiles, nuclear cruise missiles, rail guns, and high-powered lasers — all technologies that are in various stages of development by the Navy.
In fact, reports the AP, the Navy “spent hundreds of millions of dollars and more than 15 years trying to field a railgun aboard a ship before finally abandoning the effort in 2021.”
American surface ships haven’t carried nuclear weapons, I read somewhere, since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Navy was glad to be rid of them. But, you know, Trump.
Navy Secretary John Phelan told reporters: “The future Trump-class battleship, the USS Defiant, will be the largest, deadliest and most versatile and best-looking warship anywhere on the world’s oceans.”
Because if the U.S. Navy can’t destroy enemies with weapons that work, we’ll kill ’em with good looks?
The Navy modified four vintage Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s to carry “cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, along with modern radars, but by the 1990s all four were decommissioned.” Because we haven’t used 16-inch guns to bombard enemy positions since 1984 (Lebanese Civil War).
Trump will grab headlines and stand before artists’ renderings. But for the real thing, he’ll first have to get appropriations through Congress and find some way to build them.
CNN:
As far as large complex ships go, the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS John F Kennedy, has slipped about two years behind its scheduled delivery date, which was July of this year. Those delays have been attributed to new landing and weapons elevator systems which the service is still trying to get certified.
Then there’s the question of who will build these new battleships. US shipyards are already stretched thin with current construction, maintenance and overhaul jobs.
“We no longer have the shipbuilding and maritime industrial infrastructure to do this quickly,” said analyst Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain.
Ships the size of the Trump-class would need the same dockyard space as large amphibious and logistical support ships the Navy also needs, so closed shipyards would need to be reactivated or new ones built, Schuster said.
Second verse, same as the first: What investments does the Trump family have in shipbuilding ventures?
Happy Hollandaise!