New battleships named after Trump are 'bomb magnets' -- and will never sail: expert

[LetMyPeopleVote]

This battleship makes no sense and will never be built

New battleships named after Trump are 'bomb magnets' — and will never sail: expert

www.rawstory.com/alternet-pos...

— (@bobshaw-28.bsky.social) 2025-12-26T21:50:29.523Z

https://www.rawstory.com/alternet-posts/trump-battleship/

Donald Trump's much-hyped new battleship fleet, named after himself, "will never sail," a group of experts told CNBC in a new report, owing to the outdated design that will make them a "bomb magnet" in a real conflict.

Earlier this week, the president unveiled a new "Trump-class" of US Navy battleships, which he touted as "some of the most lethal surface warfare ships" and "the fastest, the biggest, and by far, 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built." Despite his enthusiasm from Trump about maintaining "American military supremacy," CNBC on Friday noted the "glaring problem" putting them at odds with reality: "battleships have been obsolete for decades."

"The last was built more than 80 years ago, and the U.S. Navy retired the last Iowa-class ships nearly 30 years ago," CNBC explained. "Once symbols of naval might with their massive guns, battleships have long since been eclipsed by aircraft carriers and modern destroyers armed with long-range missiles."

The outlet conceded that Trump's labeling of these new ships with the outdated model name could be a "misnomer," and the actual ships might be more in line with modern sensibilities. Speaking to several experts about the ships, however, CNBC found that the "Trump-class" fleet is still out of step with naval realities, with Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, arguing that they "would take too long to design, cost far too much and run counter to the Navy’s current strategy of distributed firepower."

"A future administration will cancel the program before the first ship hits the water," Cancian said, also adding that "there is little need for said discussion because this ship will never sail."

[dem4decades]

1. Battleships became outdated once the aircraft carrier became prominent.

The jury is still out if the aircraft carrier is out of date yet but it soon will be too. Grandpa Trump would love the battleship, his time is over too, they are perfect together.

[Norrrm]

3. Yes. Carriers are a projection of peacetime power.

Yes. Carriers are a projection of peacetime power.

Or limited wars.

Many years ago, Rickover said they would be taken out in short order.

After a week of a big war, they will be at the pier or on the bottom.

[Metaphorical]

2. One word: Drones

Drones have radically changed land warfare, with the Russia/Ukraine war being a prime example. Their use in sea combat hasn't been proven out to the same extent, solely because there has been no wide-scale naval conflicts in the last couple of decades, but the use of drones by the Ukranians in the Black Sea against Russian ships has effectively destroyed the Russian presence there. Weapon platform drones are capable of deployments over 1000 miles (1600 km), and can be launched from a frigate or cutter with a helipad deck. What's more, such drones typically are cooler and have much more diffuse radar and lidar signatures even than ballistic missiles, and can be deployed from a C4 cargo plane well away from a field of conflict.

The kind of battleship that Trump is proposing, on the other hand, has an effective range of perhaps 60 miles (100 km) would need to be so heavily armored as to be barely seaworthy, and frankly would be a sitting duck to a drone attack. Moreover, battleships only made sense when they were fighting other battleships, but with the rise of naval air power following WWII, most countries stopped building them because they made no sense strategically even in a support role.

[2MuchNoise]

4. Uh oh! Wet magnets!