So, we have a USS Defiant (BBG-1)
This was going to be a dual post about last Friday’s frigate announcement and the battleship announcement, but I decided that would be a bit too much and will split it in two.
The greatest interest is in the BB news Monday afternoon, so we’ll cover that today and on Christmas Eve we’ll post on the frigate.
Well, let’s start with the announcement on X.
First of all, let’s put to the side the Trump branding aspect of this. Let’s put this in the “F-47A” folder and move on…but we can give a knowing wink to fans of Deep Space 9.
Mike over at gCaptain got the detail sheet. Let’s look at it.
BBG-1
What am I surprised the most about? The lack of nuclear power. The Ford Class CVNs are on the struggle bus and we are building them slower than we are building the power plants. We could have built it around the Ford’s nuclear plant.
If you want to keep up with the CVN, charge your railgun capacitors, and power your lasers…you’re going to need a LOT of power at sustained high levels. Nuclear power can give you that. It is a lot more challenging to do that with a conventionally powered ship…but it will cost less.
My bet: there’s the rub.
Conventional power? A bit limiting. Will we be using the Zumwalt’s engineering plant? I really don’t know. Heck, I don’t even know if we’ve figured out whether it works well. Neither does the Navy, really. The ship has never been properly tested, nor even pushed through a full deployment.
Sigh.
So, we know this deserves a “G”…but does this ship deserve the “BB”?
Well, before any of this was announced on Monday, I decided I would put my cards on the table about what I considered baseline requirements.
OK, I will just like to go ahead and put this out ahead of time.
1. If it isn’t >40,000 tons full load displacement (inline with the North Carolina Class BB (Iowa Class was 60,000 full load displacement), it isn’t a BB.
2. If it does not have the AAW capability 2X a Flight III Arleigh Burke DDG, it isn’t a BB.
3. If it does not have at least two 5” gun mounts and six 76mm gun mounts (I’d love to see the MK-71 8” come back, but I’m trying to be reasonable), it isn’t a BB.
4. If it doesn’t have at least 4X the number of Conventional Prompt Strike missiles than the soon to be upgraded Zumwalt DDG, it isn’t a BB. Well, I guess in our archaic ship classification system, it should be a BBG by now.
5. It should have the same nuclear power plant as the Ford CVN (100,000 tons full load), which will make it a BBGN.
For planning purposes (and budgeting), assume it will wind up costing at least 2/3 of a Ford CVN w/o her CVW.
OK. There’s my blind Quick Look should Lara’s sources be solid.
Should we do that? Could we do that? Will be a fun debate.
Final note: If we wanted to reach for the stars, the most modern large caliber gun the US Navy built was the 12-inch/50 caliber Mark 8 gun of the Alaska Class Large Cruisers (in Salamanderland they are battle cruisers at 34,800 tons) in service from 1944-47. We could brush those plans off…and…well…if we still have the steel mills that can produce the barrels…
So, how did we do?
It states >35K, so we’re close. Given that our tendency to add weight, we might just meet the minimums there.
Doesn’t have twice the VLS cells of a Flight III, but it has lasers. Once again, might be close to the minimum.
We got the two 5”. Instead of six 76mm, we have four 30mm. Almost…but not quite there.
I was a little overenthusiastic about the CPS. A dozen is not quite enough. The cost of being too light in displacement, I guess.
Oops.
If I were being pedantic, I’d say we just fell short of making a 21st-century battleship. However, we are calling an Arleigh Burke Flight III DDG a destroyer, when it is really a cruiser. The Europeans call everything a frigate. Don’t even get me started with the Japanese and aircraft carriers. This will be the largest surface combatant afloat…so as in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king…I guess we can make the stretch.
I would call it a large cruiser, a CB. And no, you are not the only one thinking of CG(X).
What did I say about cost? Two-thirds of ~$12 billion is $8 billion, but that was based on it being nuclear powered. IIRC, cost estimate of the nuclear CG(X) came in at around $7 billion in 2009 dollars. The nation balked and the Obama Administration cancelled it a year later.
That would be ~$10.5 billion in 2025 dollars.
No one wanted a large nuclear cruiser in 2009. However, people are supporting a large non-nuclear cruiser / small(ish) battleship in 2025. Maybe we have a fighting chance?
Anyway, we’re going to call it a BB, I guess, so, a battleship it is…but will we see it displace water?
USS Long Beach (CGN-9) was laid down in 1957, commissioned in 1961. Four years.
USS Virginia (CGN-38) was laid down in 1972, commissioned in 1976. Four years.
Is USS Defiant (¿BBG?-1) a mature design? Are we ready to cut steel? Could we lay it down in 2026? Will Congress fund it? If they do…that means it would (please suspend disbelief for a moment that we can perform like previous generations) commission in 2030? Really? Maybe 2040? Maybe never?
I don’t think the railgun is ready, but maybe it is. if not, we could follow the lead of the great naval tradition of “fitted for but not with" until it is? It worked with the Spruance Class DD.
What it will require is funding and support from both political parties over the next decade. Sadly, we are already seeing this partisanship creeping up. I hope it fades, but in the pettiness of today’s politics? It will be a slog to get there.
I made this comment to defend the idea on a YouTube video that was very critical of it. I'll leave it here because I think it represents the likeliest chance this program has of success and mainstream acceptance:
"I think I could provide an argument as to why this idea may be a step in the right direction. First, allow me to point out that if all of these Trump class ships are built, there will be 25 of them in total. Now let me point out that there were 27 Ticonderoga class ships built in total. This is not a coincidence. During the early 1970's, under the leadership of Admiral Zumwalt, the navy sought to bring about a 'high-low' mix in capabilities. What this would entail would be a smaller number of very capable, fast, and large nuclear powered cruisers that would be the apex of naval surface warfare, and a much larger numbers of destroyers and frigates. Ultimately, the nuclear cruisers were to expensive to be built in sufficient numbers and the Ticonderoga class was developed to fill the gap and be the "high" of the high-low mix. This 'Trump class' of ship is really just the revival of this high-low mix doctrine which was tacitly abandoned in the 2010s due to political finagling and the lack of a replacement for the Ticonderoga class, which is causing all sorts of problems for the navy btw.
This brings me to the actual 'battleship' proposal, it's not actually a battleship, it's an overly-large guided missile cruiser. It will have a similar number of VLS cells as a Ticonderoga, or a Type 052 class destroyer, or even the EXACT same number of VLS cells as a KD(X) destroyer. The only difference between the proposed battleship and these ships is that these ships are all 12,000 tons, whereas the proposed USS Defiance will be >35K tons. It's completely overkill, this extra space is going to be used to house, X1 railgun, X2 5in guns, X12 CPS (hypersonic) missiles, and a large short-medium range defensive armament. Much of this is redundant, an incredible amount of electrical energy and space will be used to install defenses to defend this very large ship, which needs to be large to power the defenses.
I would not be surprised if the play from the navy here, is to show a study to POTUS in 3 months time that simply says, "You see Mr. President, if we build a ship that's just 20-25K tons we can have 80% of the capability for 40% of the cost", or something like that. The numbers don't have to be real, they just have to convince the guy. I think Trump would be perfectly happy to say that America is getting a great deal with his 'pocket battleships', they're just gonna have to put the idea in his head inception style. If this happens, the navy will get something that it desperately needs (a guided missile cruiser to replace the Ticonderogas and brings more to the fight than Arleigh Burkes) that they were never going to get otherwise. Sure it will have happened in a roundabout way, and the ships may be a little bigger than they would need to be, but I suppose that's more space for future upgrades.
So there you have it. My big prediction for this whole project is that everyone is going to mock it for easy political points. Then after a series of revisions it will deliver something useful that frankly should’ve happened earlier, but didn’t for the sake of those political points. For reference; see Space Force."
Edit: Sal Mercagliano brought up something important in today’s episode of ‘What’s Going on With Shipping?’. If you want this ship to be the centerpiece of a strike group the same way the Iowa class was used in the 1980s, you need to have a very large ship in order to refuel and restock your escorts and extend their staying power. Staying power and energy is in fact the main benefits of a ship of this size.
I don’t understand why this wasn’t 20% more displacement and nuclear. Cost only? Or more?