The US president said the new ships would ensure sea control and be equipped with AI and laser technology.
US President Donald Trump has announced plans to build a new “Trump-class” battleship, saying it will be bigger, faster and 100 times more powerful than the largest warship ever built by the US.
Speaking at the Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago on Monday, President Trump said the battleships would be part of a larger vision to create what he called a “Golden Fleet” to help secure U.S. naval dominance.
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The US president announced the plans while standing next to a rendering of the new ship that appears to have his image on it.
“We had big battleships. This one is even bigger. It’s going to be 100 times the strength and power (of the old battleships). We’ve never had a battleship like this before,” Trump said.
He added that the vessels are “state-of-the-art” and equipped with the latest technology, including artificial intelligence and directed energy lasers. It will also be equipped with hypersonic missiles, nuclear cruise missiles, and railguns, all of which technologies are in various stages of development by the U.S. Navy.
“These will all be the largest battleships in the history of our country and the largest battleships in the history of the world,” he said.
President Trump downplayed the idea that the new ships were aimed at countering any particular country, calling them “a countermeasure against all nations.”
The US president said production would start with two ships, but could be scaled up to 10 and up to 25 over an unspecified period of time.
President Trump said work on the first two ships would begin “immediately” and that the first ship would be named USS Defiant.
Although President Trump and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan have both spoken of the new Trump-class warships as spiritual successors to 20th-century battleships, the term has historically referred to a very specific type of ship: large, heavy armored vessels equipped with huge guns designed to bombard other ships and land targets.
This type of ship reached its peak during World War II, when the Iowa-class battleship was the largest of the U.S. battleships, weighing approximately 60,000 tons. However, after World War II, the role of battleships in modern fleets rapidly diminished in favor of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles.
President Trump mentioned the Great White Fleet, commissioned by former President Theodore Roosevelt in the early 20th century as a symbol of U.S. naval power, and a documentary about the naval battles during World War II.
“‘Victory at Sea.’ I don’t know if anyone saw ‘Victory at Sea,’ but it was a classic,” he said, adding that the new ships would help “maintain America’s military advantage.”
According to a new website created for the Golden Fleet, the new “guided missile battleships” will be about the same size as the Iowa-class battleships, but weigh only about half as much, at about 35,000 tons, and have a much smaller crew of 650 to 850 sailors.
The main weapons will also be missiles instead of large naval guns.
President Trump said the Navy expansion would also be coupled with new pressure on defense contractors to accelerate production and contain costs.
He said he would meet with major defense companies next week to address delays and overruns, and to investigate whether executive compensation, stock buybacks and dividends were contributing to missed production targets.
“I don’t want executives to be making $50 million a year and paying out big dividends and buying back stock,” Trump said, as production of the F-35 and other fighter jets slumps.
