Trump announces plans for new navy warships to be known as ‘Trump-class’ | US military
Just when you thought it was safe to return to the water. Donald Trump has announced plans for the US Navy to build a new generation of warships, known as the “Trump Class”.
The ships will be bigger, faster and a hundred times more powerful than any previous warship built in the United States, the president said Monday. The project will begin with the construction of two such battleships and will eventually be expanded to 20 to 25 new ships.
Navy Secretary John Phelan added: “Our adversaries will know that when the Trump-class USS Defiant appears on the horizon, American victory at sea is inevitable. »
Older classes of battleships were usually named after American states. But Trump, whose name already adorns many hotels and golf clubs, is currently indulging in what critics call narcissistic madness.
Earlier this month, his administration renamed the United States Institute of Peace in Washington in his honor. Last week, the board of trustees of the Trump-appointed John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington voted to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center and a sign was added, although the move requires congressional authorization.
Monday’s announcement took place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, where three posters on easels displayed potential images of a new “Trump-class” battleship called the USS Defiant.
Phelan told reporters: “The future Trump-class battleship, the USS Defiant, will be the largest, deadliest, most versatile and most beautiful warship in any of the world’s oceans. I want to thank the President for his vision to make this capability a game-changer for the United States Navy.”
“The Iowa was designed to attack with the biggest guns and that’s exactly what will define the Trump-class battleships: the offensive firepower of the biggest guns of our time. This ship isn’t just meant to crush arrows. She’ll reach out and kill archers.”
Like Trump, Phelan approvingly cited Victory at Sea, a 1950s television series about naval combat during World War II. “Now this new battleship will command everything from warships to drones and everything in between,” he said. “We’re going to make battle groups great again.»
Historically, the term battleship referred to a huge, heavily armored ship, armed with massive cannons designed to bombard other ships or shore targets. This type of ship was especially common during World War II, when the largest American battleship, the Iowa class, weighed around 60,000 tons.
After the war, the role of battleships in modern fleets rapidly declined in favor of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles. The U.S. Navy upgraded four Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s with cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, as well as modern radars, but by the 1990s all four were decommissioned.
Trump said Monday: “We anticipate that these ships will be the first of an entirely new class of battleships that will be produced in the coming years.
“I just want to be very clear that we build them here. We work with others but we build them here. We have big shipyards. We will negotiate with some of the companies that run those yards.”
The “golden fleet” will be equipped with hypersonic weapons and high-power lasers and will carry nuclear-powered cruise missiles currently under development, the president added. “We are going to restore America as a major shipbuilding power. We are going to make the United States the most powerful fleet in the world.”
It is more traditional for former presidents to be commemorated by the names of aircraft carriers. In January, the Navy announced that two future aircraft carriers would be named USS William J Clinton and USS George W Bush.
