Not really. We will charge rent at the midterms. BTW, I hear the new definition of TDS is now “Trump Devotion Syndrome” for anyone stupid enough to support any Trump policies and tactics including this big, bloated, battleship.
Anyone hoping that the party of Pelosi, Sanders, AOC, Schumer, Newsom, Harris, Mamdani, Walz, Waters, Buttigieg, Booker, Schiff...... the list of lying, cheating, treasonous, moronic scumbags goes on... should not be talking about anyone else being "stupid".
Wow, not one pedophile among them. Note, I didn’t mention a Party, just Trump. But since you mention it, I’m a Reagan Republican. This is no longer the Republican Party. It is now the Guardians of Pedophiles Party. Until all trace of his authoritarian agenda is erased and those responsible held accountable will the Republican Party be made healthy. Until then, I won’t cast a single vote for a Republican candidate. I’ll join the growing ranks of Independents who oppose Trump and everything he stands for.
Politics aside, a Battleship is still a reflection of Trump’s stupidity and narcissism and irrelevant to the fight. It is worthy of the Proxmire Golden Fleece Award. And anyone who supports him and it is suffering from the new TDS.
There isn't one single shred of evidence of Trump being a pedo, not one. If there were Obama/Biden had all the evidence in their own DOJ's and would not have hesitated to destroy Trump with it. It's clear, anyone who runs with the "Trump is a pedo" nonsense is a moron.
I look at the "Trump class" in the same way as the "Coolidge Cruisers", ie the President being instrumental in their construction (or proposed construction in the BBG case) but none named Coolidge/Trump.
I think the BBGs could serve multiple uses - take up the role of the Ticos, if properly equipped, for Fleet operations. They could operate in their own surface action groups with several Burkes. Or they could operate independently (in a networked kill web for targeting, etc.) if outfitted with the Surface Ship Torpedo Defense (SSTD) system, Nixies, and MK-58 CRAW (assuming helicopters or suitably equipped Osprey/Valor for torpedoes, dipping sonars, and/or a towed-array sonar for the BBG).
You could always make room for a few more VLS cells, they have the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) hypersonic missiles, and it seems the Japanese may have worked out a "small caliber" rail-gun (equivalent to 5") that could serve an air defense role - though the capacitors and such would need to fit inside (thus a large ship!) and the electrical loads were worked out (again a large ship).
It almost certainly argues for nuclear power, but this might take longer than the MTU power plant or GE Marine's LM2500 gas turbines or a split design between electrical power and drive systems.
If we use this as an accelerated "Apollo-type" program to reinvent and streamline our warship acquisition, production, and resources then it will have served its purpose. But we need to fill in behind it with the new DDG design and the frigates.
Capabilities in search of a mission is bass ackwards. Start with a mission/requirements then you analyze cost vs effectiveness of various ship options that can achieve. Declaring a golden Battleship to be the answer is a waste of time and money, and we’ll start all over again when this administration is over.
That reminds me of the FF(X) in reverse, which has a lack of integrated capability. Even the Executive Director of Naval Sea Systems command doesn't seem to know what it does... quote:
“Everybody keeps asking me, what about this? What about that? My answer back is, I care about getting this ship into production, learning, adapting and figuring out what this ship needs to grow into.”
Or you could say "if you want a strike cruiser, use the TICO as a baseline". We don't have more DDG 1000s for a reason and we need something a little bigger to fit in CPS (beyone replacing the turrets) and the other elements. They only have 80 MK-57 VLS cells (about 90 missiles WITH the CPS, depending on load out), though adapting the peripheral spacing to add more VLS cells to the BBG would be nice to add even more punch.
Add a 15' plug for and aft and raise it to 96 Mk 57 plus the 12 CPS which could be 28 Tomahawk or take the big tubes out and you could fit 32 Mk 41. Plus those plugs could allow for more point defenses.
You could use a Tico as the basis for a strike cruiser, but the lower size and much smaller power generation capability make it less suitable than a Zumwalt.
I agree that you can't add much more to a Zumwalt, but what it has is not an inconsiderable amount of firepower. I work it out to be 92 if each VLS has one missile, and the 4 COS tubes each have the 3 CPS they can carry.
Depending on what is in the VLS cells, though, it could actually be much higher. You could have a load out of 40 Tomahawks, 20 SM-variants, and 80 ESSM, for example. Add in the 12 CPS and you have serious strike and reasonable self defense capability.
It is a waste of time considering the never to be ship type. More like the dreadnoughts of more than a century ago. Trump may spend millions of bucks on RD that won't get construction.
The USN needs more surface combatants now, not a few off in the next decade.
Good Lord, why? What tactical or strategic hole does this fill? Wouldn’t we rather have a couple squadrons of frigates instead? You know? Sea lanes… Alfred Thayer Mahan… that kind of thing?
It’s true he was a battleship guy but he lived in the era where the dreadnoughts were king and mostly untouchable. This thing will be first to the bottom.
My biggest gripe against the DEFIANT class would be that it is a ship class to win the peace that comes AFTER the third world war, not to actually participate in it. We should be building small combatants, by the bushel.
If a decision has been made to concentrate a lot of combat power aboard a 35,000 ton warship design -- hopefully as part of some kind of comprehensive fleet design philosophy -- the spec the US Navy has offered for the USS Defiant is severely deficient relative to the capital resources, the human resources, and the material resources that their own conceptual design will consume.
Donald Trump has a long history of tossing out big ideas as a starting point for spawning further discussion of a given controversial topic. And so I regard the US Navy's published description of the notional USS Defiant battleship-class warship as merely a starting point for encouraging further debate concerning what such a warship should look like.
In that vein, I offer an alternative design for a large-displacement 21st Century surface combatant which loads maximum combat power into a 35,000 ton hull named USS Defiant, the BBG-1 Class. Here is Version 1.01 of my notional BBG-1 design dated 17 February 2026:
-- Multiple high power microwave defensive radar panels mounted high up in two separate towers, one forward, one aft.
-- Four megawatt-class defensive lasers, four kilowatt class defensive lasers.
-- The four Mw class laser turrets are mounted in the same towers as the defensive radars: three lasers forward, one aft.
-- Laser beam generation units are located inside the fore and aft superstructures.
-- Internally-generated megawatt-class laser beams are directed upwards inside vertical shafts located inside the two radar/sensor towers.
-- Stabilized laser optics. Internal beam redirection mirrors are replaceable at sea.
-- Active hull stabilization improves targeting performance of laser weapons.
-- Two drone launch EM catapults located aft and embedded in the flight deck.
-- Stern gate and spaces aft for offboard operations support.
-- One articulating crane aft. Substantial support for onboard and offboard combat logistics.
-- Four MH-60 Seahawks. Support for offboard UUV and UAV operations.
-- Heavily reinforced, full-volume lower hull plus active stabilization counteracts topweight.
Design Comments:
(1) In a combat environment where a mix of drones, anti-ship missiles, and hypersonic missiles will be arriving from every direction, shipboard defensive systems must cover all points of the compass near simultaneously. Power consuming lasers and high power microwave defensive systems must have enough energy available in real time to deal with high intensity missile and drone attacks.
(2) Tactical mobility in a high threat weapons engagement zone is a necessity. A large surface combatant operating in direct support of a carrier battlegroup must have the speed and endurance needed to support that battlegroup wherever it goes, however fast it goes there, when it decides to go there.
(3) Combat logistics in the western Pacific will remain constrained for decades into the future. What combat logistics support actually is present in the western Pacific will be subject to intense interdiction and attack. Large internal ordnance magazines and added internal storage volume for fuel and supplies reduces the number of UNREPS needed at sea inside a high threat combat zone.
(4) The BBG-1 warship's primary defensive armor is an integrated system of microwave energy weapons, laser energy weapons, anti-missile ordnance types, and gun-launched ordnance types.
(5) The ship's overall design is biased towards supporting directed energy weapons and VLS-launched weapons. A smaller set of naval artillery systems, rather than what would normally be included in a 'battleship' class of warship, is specified as a necessary tradeoff to keep the ship's displacement at 35,000 tons.
(6) The design includes a single eight-inch long-barrel gun in lieu of a railgun. In addition to 8-inch ordnance types, the 8-inch system can handle saboted 155mm and 5-inch/127mm naval artillery rounds. The 8-inch gun would leverage on whatever design elements might be adapted from the 8-inch MCLWG program. It is likely that the majority of the ordnance passing through this gun would be saboted 155mm and 5-inch rounds, the advantage being the ability to send a 155mm or a 5-inch round farther downrange.
(7) The first Flight of the Class is powered by gas turbines tied to an all-electric propulsion system. Nuclear power is a logical option for this design, for some number of reasons. However, getting the ship designed, constructed, and the first hulls into the water is a more important consideration at this point for Flight I of the class. The notional BBG-1's hull and superstructure layout, with the initial gas turbines located under the forward superstructure, minimizes hull configuration changes if the nuclear option for a future flight of the class was to be adopted.
General Comments:
In regard to the combat systems, and with the exception of the megawatt class lasers and the 8-inch long-barrel gun, every combat system embarked aboard the BBG-1 is either available today, or else is reasonably close on the technology development horizon.
Simply having the necessary combat systems available isn't enough. A problem to be faced in seriously thinking about a warship like the notional BBG-1 is how, practically, to integrate all of these systems together on a single warship without causing total project/program complexity to go exponential -- thus causing project cost and schedule to go exponential.
Creating a warship like the BBG-1 would require a highly disciplined customer/contractor project team which is highly competent in all phases of warship specification, design, combat systems integration, and construction. Does such a customer/contractor team presently exist?
The answer here is clearly no, it does not. Unless such a team can be assembled, neither the Navy's concept nor my notional BBG-1 concept could be delivered in the numbers needed to make any real difference in our ability to fight a major conflict at sea in the western Pacific.
I will remark here that the capability to build a complex warship, and the complex warship itself, are all One Thing. These are not two separate things. We either have both together as One Thing done well, or else we have neither, just a lot of time and money spent uselessly chasing rainbows.
Here is another key point. At the very beginning of the project, who decides what the Defiant Class battleship should look like? The senior leadership of the Department of War? The Navy's own senior leadership and their supporting staff? The big defense contractors? A team of naval consultants? Someone else?
Let's be honest here.
The only way a USS Defiant based on my personal concept could go forward would be for the President himself to put an illustration of the notional BBG-1 up on the big silver screen and then say to the Secretary of War and to the senior US Navy leadership, "This is what I want and what I as your Commander in Chief believe is needed for the Defiant Class battleship. You go and build this ship pretty much as pictured, with appropriate modifications to its basic design as you justify to be necessary."
Even with a directive from Trump, this concept won’t survive his administration. It will be scrapped and we’ll get to start over, again, with lost time and millions of dollars wasted. He’s already a lame duck.
"As Tom Nichols, retired professor at the US Naval War College, writes, 'the goal, apparently, was to give a childlike president a new toy, named after himself, in exchange for gobs of money that the Navy will figure out how to spend later.'”
This "Trump class" comes off looking like a pacifier for one very large, very cranky baby: Donald John Trump. Start with the naming: standard practice is naming a class by the name of its first ship, when anyway battleships have been named for US states, not for a Trump mood such as "Defiant." (What is to follow, USS Cranky?)
Not least, Trump foresees building 10 such ships to begin with, followed by "20 to 25" more.
The first battleship is estimated to cost about $21 billion, when cost estimates for projects such as this are notorious for overruns. If that estimate holds for the ships, as does Trump's fever dream of building 35 in total, that represents spending $735 billion. Our entire budget for 2025 was only $7 billion (including a record $1.7 billion deficit). Just how is this sort of spending, more than 1/10 more of one year's entire budget, to be made affordable? It's easy to see that Trump, who thinks nothing of blowing $3 million plus on each golf trip to Mar-a-Lago (16 so far this term), has no real grasp of what such fantasy projects should really cost, nor where that money should come from.
The Idea is to make an Armored strike platform for surface combat that can deliver a knock out blow to some small to medium size Nations , defeat their Surface ships and have the armor to ward of a large range of enemy missiles. A Non Carrier that can carry drones and even Helo's for recon, ASM and attack.
It would be the Main warship of designated task force use.
You have the childlike fantasy of Trump that quite frankly supersedes your ability to discuss or even look beyond your hate for a man you don't even know.
Right now I believe the closet thing to a battleship without armor is the Boomer submarines.
They carry the load out though not easy to reload and they have no guns.
A Battleship should carry the missile load a Sub does and have armor to defeat most everything outside of known ship killers, and a good range of guns, Drones and SAMS.
I have known Trump since the Seventies, living just sixty miles off in Connecticut. There’s very little about that creep I lack knowing, things you are either ignorant or accepting of.
You, poor thing, would probably let him hold your billfold as you go for a swim, or let Uncle Donald babysit your fourteen year-old daughter.
That last one of mine went in the wrong direction. It is meant as a reply to Bear for his impugning my encyclopaedic knowledge of the 360-degree S.O.B. that is Donald John Trump.
As to Liberty ships vs. battleships I think the unglamorous Liberty ship class was much more important to victory in WWII than the Iowa battleship class.
That planned-for, long-range shooting match between battleships seldom came to pass. Air power had made the battleship somewhat obsolete from 10 December 1941, and it has become incalculably more powerful since then.
Even Bear seems to have come upon a basic truth with this: "A Battleship [sic] should [...] have armor to defeat most everything outside of known ship killers." So the USS Cranky is going to be big, flashy, and crazy-expensive but also vulnerable to "known ship killers"? And let us assume that by the time one of these Trump dreamboats hits the water "ship killers" will have evolved beyond our ken.
Logistics will probably play a leading role in a future war in the Pacific. In fact, I think the Commander has often said so himself. Building multi-billion-dollar battleships meant to go up against "known ship killers" would seem to make less sense than directing much of that funding to less-expensive, less-glamorous, but far more important ships meant to supply our forces across the vast Pacific.
I think if we ask nicely New York City Mayor Mamdani will agree to name one of the City's fleet of garbage scows the Donald J. Trump. $50 for some paint would sort that out, along with another $100 for a really big flag. The idea of a large class of ships meant to fight being named for a notorious draft-dodger makes no sense compared to naming just one filled with a load of festering crap.
BTW - Memo to the CDR Sal Crew - finally tracked down what is happening with the rust on our ships compared to the past.
Due to environmental/green considerations, the Navy phased out highly effective, but potentially toxic, anti-corrosion coatings in favor of greener alternatives. Regulations banning the effective older coatings (like certain biocides) have required the adoption of newer, more eco-friendly, but sometimes less durable, alternatives. Also, the newer coatings are harder to apply (needing to be applied in the yard vs at sea), require more precise preparation, and may not last as long, leading to more frequent rust, particularly in hard-to-reach areas.
Certainly ships are deployed longer in (the same) harsh conditions as always, which allows less time for crew-led maintenance and painting - but it is also impossible to apply some of these paints outside of the maintenance period in port. This is also compounded by limited hands-on training of crew for proper maintenance, making it harder to keep up with the constant need to paint.
The main dangers from the older materials related to exposure during chipping/grinding and application - as well as storage/spills. Generally, this would be true for lead paints or those with arsenic, chromium, asbestos (heat coatings), etc. without effective respirators and proper ventilation. But, I wouldn't doubt there are more effective alternatives that are by-passed for "green" alternatives, just like converting to bio-fuel for ships.
MIL-PRF-23236/MIL-PRF-24647 for Corrosion Control and MIL-PRF-24635 for Exterior Surfaces, among others.
I’m hesitant to take advice on defense matters from. PhD a who never sailed in harm’s way. Washington DC is full of these folks and the results show. I’d rather listen to the chiefs and petty officers, the lots and skippers.
Who else thinks that the first Trump class battleship should be christened the USS Maine @WhiteHouse and @SecRubio ? Cuba libre!
https://x.com/stevenrfields/status/2022993175867244716?s=46&t=e6aliPxM0XPTD-LWmklHtQ
More like the USS Golden Turd.
Or "USS Living Rent Free in the Heads of TDS Sufferers"
Not really. We will charge rent at the midterms. BTW, I hear the new definition of TDS is now “Trump Devotion Syndrome” for anyone stupid enough to support any Trump policies and tactics including this big, bloated, battleship.
Anyone hoping that the party of Pelosi, Sanders, AOC, Schumer, Newsom, Harris, Mamdani, Walz, Waters, Buttigieg, Booker, Schiff...... the list of lying, cheating, treasonous, moronic scumbags goes on... should not be talking about anyone else being "stupid".
Wow, not one pedophile among them. Note, I didn’t mention a Party, just Trump. But since you mention it, I’m a Reagan Republican. This is no longer the Republican Party. It is now the Guardians of Pedophiles Party. Until all trace of his authoritarian agenda is erased and those responsible held accountable will the Republican Party be made healthy. Until then, I won’t cast a single vote for a Republican candidate. I’ll join the growing ranks of Independents who oppose Trump and everything he stands for.
Politics aside, a Battleship is still a reflection of Trump’s stupidity and narcissism and irrelevant to the fight. It is worthy of the Proxmire Golden Fleece Award. And anyone who supports him and it is suffering from the new TDS.
There isn't one single shred of evidence of Trump being a pedo, not one. If there were Obama/Biden had all the evidence in their own DOJ's and would not have hesitated to destroy Trump with it. It's clear, anyone who runs with the "Trump is a pedo" nonsense is a moron.
How about we follow tradition and name the first Trump-class the USS Donald J. Trump?
I look at the "Trump class" in the same way as the "Coolidge Cruisers", ie the President being instrumental in their construction (or proposed construction in the BBG case) but none named Coolidge/Trump.
Naming a warship after a living person isn't a good idea. But I guess that ship has sailed already.
Literally, several times over.
I'd pick a Medal of Honor winner in the Iraq and Afganistan war for the Name.
I think the BBGs could serve multiple uses - take up the role of the Ticos, if properly equipped, for Fleet operations. They could operate in their own surface action groups with several Burkes. Or they could operate independently (in a networked kill web for targeting, etc.) if outfitted with the Surface Ship Torpedo Defense (SSTD) system, Nixies, and MK-58 CRAW (assuming helicopters or suitably equipped Osprey/Valor for torpedoes, dipping sonars, and/or a towed-array sonar for the BBG).
You could always make room for a few more VLS cells, they have the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) hypersonic missiles, and it seems the Japanese may have worked out a "small caliber" rail-gun (equivalent to 5") that could serve an air defense role - though the capacitors and such would need to fit inside (thus a large ship!) and the electrical loads were worked out (again a large ship).
It almost certainly argues for nuclear power, but this might take longer than the MTU power plant or GE Marine's LM2500 gas turbines or a split design between electrical power and drive systems.
If we use this as an accelerated "Apollo-type" program to reinvent and streamline our warship acquisition, production, and resources then it will have served its purpose. But we need to fill in behind it with the new DDG design and the frigates.
Capabilities in search of a mission is bass ackwards. Start with a mission/requirements then you analyze cost vs effectiveness of various ship options that can achieve. Declaring a golden Battleship to be the answer is a waste of time and money, and we’ll start all over again when this administration is over.
That reminds me of the FF(X) in reverse, which has a lack of integrated capability. Even the Executive Director of Naval Sea Systems command doesn't seem to know what it does... quote:
“Everybody keeps asking me, what about this? What about that? My answer back is, I care about getting this ship into production, learning, adapting and figuring out what this ship needs to grow into.”
If you want a strike cruiser use the DDG 1000 as a baseline. Those costs and capabilities are known
Or you could say "if you want a strike cruiser, use the TICO as a baseline". We don't have more DDG 1000s for a reason and we need something a little bigger to fit in CPS (beyone replacing the turrets) and the other elements. They only have 80 MK-57 VLS cells (about 90 missiles WITH the CPS, depending on load out), though adapting the peripheral spacing to add more VLS cells to the BBG would be nice to add even more punch.
Just not much room on the DDG-1000 to do anything else. https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjc3NjEzNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY4MTE0NDY0Nn0.h1zCEgoi0_3UXitJ-0kub_Igg1_dorfRkH7-IJNQAVY/image.jpg
Add a 15' plug for and aft and raise it to 96 Mk 57 plus the 12 CPS which could be 28 Tomahawk or take the big tubes out and you could fit 32 Mk 41. Plus those plugs could allow for more point defenses.
At this point, frankly, you are basically making a new design.
Maybe, It would be nice if someone could dive into it. You just don't see thesis on stuff like this coming from NPS any more.
You could use a Tico as the basis for a strike cruiser, but the lower size and much smaller power generation capability make it less suitable than a Zumwalt.
I agree that you can't add much more to a Zumwalt, but what it has is not an inconsiderable amount of firepower. I work it out to be 92 if each VLS has one missile, and the 4 COS tubes each have the 3 CPS they can carry.
Depending on what is in the VLS cells, though, it could actually be much higher. You could have a load out of 40 Tomahawks, 20 SM-variants, and 80 ESSM, for example. Add in the 12 CPS and you have serious strike and reasonable self defense capability.
Tico's enlarged Spruance hull have problem even with handling the Tico's own load. There were no possibility of enlarging it even more.
"Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force"
I'm sorry, what?!?
Clearly letting the Navy have planes of their own has been a huge mistake.
And it’s a damned good book.
It is a waste of time considering the never to be ship type. More like the dreadnoughts of more than a century ago. Trump may spend millions of bucks on RD that won't get construction.
The USN needs more surface combatants now, not a few off in the next decade.
Good Lord, why? What tactical or strategic hole does this fill? Wouldn’t we rather have a couple squadrons of frigates instead? You know? Sea lanes… Alfred Thayer Mahan… that kind of thing?
Mahan did love him some battleships as well.
But you are correct, we could get a lot of other surface combatants for the price of one of these.
It’s true he was a battleship guy but he lived in the era where the dreadnoughts were king and mostly untouchable. This thing will be first to the bottom.
Yes. And as a man of that time, Mahan would have loved these.
From a modern point of view, these ships are... questionable.
I'd go for the multiple ships we could buy for the price of one of these, just like you posited.
My biggest gripe against the DEFIANT class would be that it is a ship class to win the peace that comes AFTER the third world war, not to actually participate in it. We should be building small combatants, by the bushel.
The LCS and frigate programs have also been disasters, and they are not gonna deter the Chicoms.
Neither is a battle ship. What about 2700 of these? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFR-L88a2nk
This would be the battle ship that Trump is going to help design?
TOPIC: Concept CSW-21 Alternative for the Defiant Class Battleship (BBG-1)
-----------------------------------------------------
If a decision has been made to concentrate a lot of combat power aboard a 35,000 ton warship design -- hopefully as part of some kind of comprehensive fleet design philosophy -- the spec the US Navy has offered for the USS Defiant is severely deficient relative to the capital resources, the human resources, and the material resources that their own conceptual design will consume.
Donald Trump has a long history of tossing out big ideas as a starting point for spawning further discussion of a given controversial topic. And so I regard the US Navy's published description of the notional USS Defiant battleship-class warship as merely a starting point for encouraging further debate concerning what such a warship should look like.
In that vein, I offer an alternative design for a large-displacement 21st Century surface combatant which loads maximum combat power into a 35,000 ton hull named USS Defiant, the BBG-1 Class. Here is Version 1.01 of my notional BBG-1 design dated 17 February 2026:
https://live.staticflickr.com//65535/55100206842_8e9548cce3_o.png
Dimensions:
Length Overall: 670 Feet; Beam @ Waterline: 90 Feet; Maximum Width: 115 Feet; Full Load Draft: 32 feet; Displacement: 35,000 tons; Maximum Speed: 35+ knots.
Specification:
-- Four LM6000 or MT30 gas turbines. 160 megawatts total power generation capacity, 220,000 total shaft horsepower.
-- All electric propulsion. Gas turbines are located forward under the forward superstructure.
-- Hybrid nuclear + gas turbine propulsion is optional at additional cost.
-- Hull & superstructure layout minimizes hull configuration modifications if the nuclear option is chosen.
-- 128 Mk-41 strike-length VLS cells, 40 Mk-57 peripheral VLS cells, 24 extended height VLS cells for CPS hypersonics.
-- Aft Mk-41 and Mk-57 VLS cells are reloadable at sea. Capable of supporting reload of VLS cells aboard other warships.
-- One 8-inch long-barrel gun, one 5-inch/127mm gun, one 76mm gun, ESSM, RAM, Nulka.
-- Custom-specified radars, sensor suites. Reconfigurable radar/sensor tower foundations.
-- Multiple high power microwave defensive radar panels mounted high up in two separate towers, one forward, one aft.
-- Four megawatt-class defensive lasers, four kilowatt class defensive lasers.
-- The four Mw class laser turrets are mounted in the same towers as the defensive radars: three lasers forward, one aft.
-- Laser beam generation units are located inside the fore and aft superstructures.
-- Internally-generated megawatt-class laser beams are directed upwards inside vertical shafts located inside the two radar/sensor towers.
-- Stabilized laser optics. Internal beam redirection mirrors are replaceable at sea.
-- Active hull stabilization improves targeting performance of laser weapons.
-- Two drone launch EM catapults located aft and embedded in the flight deck.
-- Stern gate and spaces aft for offboard operations support.
-- One articulating crane aft. Substantial support for onboard and offboard combat logistics.
-- Four MH-60 Seahawks. Support for offboard UUV and UAV operations.
-- Heavily reinforced, full-volume lower hull plus active stabilization counteracts topweight.
Design Comments:
(1) In a combat environment where a mix of drones, anti-ship missiles, and hypersonic missiles will be arriving from every direction, shipboard defensive systems must cover all points of the compass near simultaneously. Power consuming lasers and high power microwave defensive systems must have enough energy available in real time to deal with high intensity missile and drone attacks.
(2) Tactical mobility in a high threat weapons engagement zone is a necessity. A large surface combatant operating in direct support of a carrier battlegroup must have the speed and endurance needed to support that battlegroup wherever it goes, however fast it goes there, when it decides to go there.
(3) Combat logistics in the western Pacific will remain constrained for decades into the future. What combat logistics support actually is present in the western Pacific will be subject to intense interdiction and attack. Large internal ordnance magazines and added internal storage volume for fuel and supplies reduces the number of UNREPS needed at sea inside a high threat combat zone.
(4) The BBG-1 warship's primary defensive armor is an integrated system of microwave energy weapons, laser energy weapons, anti-missile ordnance types, and gun-launched ordnance types.
(5) The ship's overall design is biased towards supporting directed energy weapons and VLS-launched weapons. A smaller set of naval artillery systems, rather than what would normally be included in a 'battleship' class of warship, is specified as a necessary tradeoff to keep the ship's displacement at 35,000 tons.
(6) The design includes a single eight-inch long-barrel gun in lieu of a railgun. In addition to 8-inch ordnance types, the 8-inch system can handle saboted 155mm and 5-inch/127mm naval artillery rounds. The 8-inch gun would leverage on whatever design elements might be adapted from the 8-inch MCLWG program. It is likely that the majority of the ordnance passing through this gun would be saboted 155mm and 5-inch rounds, the advantage being the ability to send a 155mm or a 5-inch round farther downrange.
(7) The first Flight of the Class is powered by gas turbines tied to an all-electric propulsion system. Nuclear power is a logical option for this design, for some number of reasons. However, getting the ship designed, constructed, and the first hulls into the water is a more important consideration at this point for Flight I of the class. The notional BBG-1's hull and superstructure layout, with the initial gas turbines located under the forward superstructure, minimizes hull configuration changes if the nuclear option for a future flight of the class was to be adopted.
General Comments:
In regard to the combat systems, and with the exception of the megawatt class lasers and the 8-inch long-barrel gun, every combat system embarked aboard the BBG-1 is either available today, or else is reasonably close on the technology development horizon.
Simply having the necessary combat systems available isn't enough. A problem to be faced in seriously thinking about a warship like the notional BBG-1 is how, practically, to integrate all of these systems together on a single warship without causing total project/program complexity to go exponential -- thus causing project cost and schedule to go exponential.
Creating a warship like the BBG-1 would require a highly disciplined customer/contractor project team which is highly competent in all phases of warship specification, design, combat systems integration, and construction. Does such a customer/contractor team presently exist?
The answer here is clearly no, it does not. Unless such a team can be assembled, neither the Navy's concept nor my notional BBG-1 concept could be delivered in the numbers needed to make any real difference in our ability to fight a major conflict at sea in the western Pacific.
I will remark here that the capability to build a complex warship, and the complex warship itself, are all One Thing. These are not two separate things. We either have both together as One Thing done well, or else we have neither, just a lot of time and money spent uselessly chasing rainbows.
Here is another key point. At the very beginning of the project, who decides what the Defiant Class battleship should look like? The senior leadership of the Department of War? The Navy's own senior leadership and their supporting staff? The big defense contractors? A team of naval consultants? Someone else?
Let's be honest here.
The only way a USS Defiant based on my personal concept could go forward would be for the President himself to put an illustration of the notional BBG-1 up on the big silver screen and then say to the Secretary of War and to the senior US Navy leadership, "This is what I want and what I as your Commander in Chief believe is needed for the Defiant Class battleship. You go and build this ship pretty much as pictured, with appropriate modifications to its basic design as you justify to be necessary."
Even with a directive from Trump, this concept won’t survive his administration. It will be scrapped and we’ll get to start over, again, with lost time and millions of dollars wasted. He’s already a lame duck.
I can sum up the Trump Class battle ship in 2 letters:
BS
"As Tom Nichols, retired professor at the US Naval War College, writes, 'the goal, apparently, was to give a childlike president a new toy, named after himself, in exchange for gobs of money that the Navy will figure out how to spend later.'”
This "Trump class" comes off looking like a pacifier for one very large, very cranky baby: Donald John Trump. Start with the naming: standard practice is naming a class by the name of its first ship, when anyway battleships have been named for US states, not for a Trump mood such as "Defiant." (What is to follow, USS Cranky?)
Not least, Trump foresees building 10 such ships to begin with, followed by "20 to 25" more.
The first battleship is estimated to cost about $21 billion, when cost estimates for projects such as this are notorious for overruns. If that estimate holds for the ships, as does Trump's fever dream of building 35 in total, that represents spending $735 billion. Our entire budget for 2025 was only $7 billion (including a record $1.7 billion deficit). Just how is this sort of spending, more than 1/10 more of one year's entire budget, to be made affordable? It's easy to see that Trump, who thinks nothing of blowing $3 million plus on each golf trip to Mar-a-Lago (16 so far this term), has no real grasp of what such fantasy projects should really cost, nor where that money should come from.
TDS strikes again! Make that a national budget of §7 trillion, with a deficit of $1.7 trillion.
This is what you get for posting a 5:30 in the morning after staying up late reading the latest Atlantic for articles about J6 and its aftermath.
The Idea is to make an Armored strike platform for surface combat that can deliver a knock out blow to some small to medium size Nations , defeat their Surface ships and have the armor to ward of a large range of enemy missiles. A Non Carrier that can carry drones and even Helo's for recon, ASM and attack.
It would be the Main warship of designated task force use.
You have the childlike fantasy of Trump that quite frankly supersedes your ability to discuss or even look beyond your hate for a man you don't even know.
TDS.
Right now I believe the closet thing to a battleship without armor is the Boomer submarines.
They carry the load out though not easy to reload and they have no guns.
A Battleship should carry the missile load a Sub does and have armor to defeat most everything outside of known ship killers, and a good range of guns, Drones and SAMS.
Ask yourself this...
Was the Liberty ship class of greater importance to WW2 or the Iowa Class?
I have known Trump since the Seventies, living just sixty miles off in Connecticut. There’s very little about that creep I lack knowing, things you are either ignorant or accepting of.
You, poor thing, would probably let him hold your billfold as you go for a swim, or let Uncle Donald babysit your fourteen year-old daughter.
That last one of mine went in the wrong direction. It is meant as a reply to Bear for his impugning my encyclopaedic knowledge of the 360-degree S.O.B. that is Donald John Trump.
As to Liberty ships vs. battleships I think the unglamorous Liberty ship class was much more important to victory in WWII than the Iowa battleship class.
That planned-for, long-range shooting match between battleships seldom came to pass. Air power had made the battleship somewhat obsolete from 10 December 1941, and it has become incalculably more powerful since then.
Even Bear seems to have come upon a basic truth with this: "A Battleship [sic] should [...] have armor to defeat most everything outside of known ship killers." So the USS Cranky is going to be big, flashy, and crazy-expensive but also vulnerable to "known ship killers"? And let us assume that by the time one of these Trump dreamboats hits the water "ship killers" will have evolved beyond our ken.
Logistics will probably play a leading role in a future war in the Pacific. In fact, I think the Commander has often said so himself. Building multi-billion-dollar battleships meant to go up against "known ship killers" would seem to make less sense than directing much of that funding to less-expensive, less-glamorous, but far more important ships meant to supply our forces across the vast Pacific.
I think if we ask nicely New York City Mayor Mamdani will agree to name one of the City's fleet of garbage scows the Donald J. Trump. $50 for some paint would sort that out, along with another $100 for a really big flag. The idea of a large class of ships meant to fight being named for a notorious draft-dodger makes no sense compared to naming just one filled with a load of festering crap.
Spittle is rough on keyboards, get a towel handy.
BTW - Memo to the CDR Sal Crew - finally tracked down what is happening with the rust on our ships compared to the past.
Due to environmental/green considerations, the Navy phased out highly effective, but potentially toxic, anti-corrosion coatings in favor of greener alternatives. Regulations banning the effective older coatings (like certain biocides) have required the adoption of newer, more eco-friendly, but sometimes less durable, alternatives. Also, the newer coatings are harder to apply (needing to be applied in the yard vs at sea), require more precise preparation, and may not last as long, leading to more frequent rust, particularly in hard-to-reach areas.
Certainly ships are deployed longer in (the same) harsh conditions as always, which allows less time for crew-led maintenance and painting - but it is also impossible to apply some of these paints outside of the maintenance period in port. This is also compounded by limited hands-on training of crew for proper maintenance, making it harder to keep up with the constant need to paint.
The main dangers from the older materials related to exposure during chipping/grinding and application - as well as storage/spills. Generally, this would be true for lead paints or those with arsenic, chromium, asbestos (heat coatings), etc. without effective respirators and proper ventilation. But, I wouldn't doubt there are more effective alternatives that are by-passed for "green" alternatives, just like converting to bio-fuel for ships.
MIL-PRF-23236/MIL-PRF-24647 for Corrosion Control and MIL-PRF-24635 for Exterior Surfaces, among others.
https://www.nsrp.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/02-NAVSEA-05-Coatings-Corrosion-Control-Update.pdf
I’m hesitant to take advice on defense matters from. PhD a who never sailed in harm’s way. Washington DC is full of these folks and the results show. I’d rather listen to the chiefs and petty officers, the lots and skippers.