It probably doesn't really matter, as this thing is never going to be built. I kind of suspect everybody is just going into "ok grandpa" mode until he loses interest and starts chasing some other half baked thing.
Millions—if not billions—of dollars are likely to be wasted on this over the coming years.
Even the name is flawed.
The battleship was clearly vulnerable to airpower in WWII. Much less so in WW1.
It’s an exaggeration saying that they were outdated in WW1, as they basically acted as a deterrent, but it was at enormous expense and they don’t do much. Too big, too slow, too expensive. The argument was playing out even prior to WW1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship
Aircraft carriers took over, as you say.
Also there were several battlecruiser/cruiser vs battlecruiser/cruiser actions.
Jutland was influential, but mainly just resulted in big ships doing nothing.
That is sort of the role nuclear weapons have too I guess?
That would be a battlecruiser, and they don't seem to have been regarded as a success.
I suspect that the "ball room" attachment to the White House will also still be a hole by the end of the administration, but a lot of money will get handed out.
You’re the first one in this thread mentioning him.
https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/USS-Defiant-T...
In other words, yes it is billions pushed back into the economy, and yes, there will likely be very little "permanent" to show for it (and presumably the navy won't be much better for it) but it's not like they're just burying the cash.
It's important to understand that for the military industrial complex the goal is to "feed the machine", not actually to produce anything. In that sense this money is not wasted, it's doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
"Spending billions" is meaningless concern until you ask the question: what would these people have been doing instead?
The "spent billions" isn't about me/my constituents/the US not having those billions. It's that those billions where finely calculated by (supposed) experts to help maintain PPP advantages over adversaries.
When one "side" starts playing pretend with money (IE; using 50 billion in western currency on the Zumwalt class of destroyers before tossing them) the other side doesn't do the same, and stop taking advantage of PPP.
If we are extremely lucky the outcome of this will be increased shipyard capacity and refined shipbuilding practices just in time to switch back to building a multitude of actually-useful ships.
But most likely is that this ends up delaying the U.S.'s ability to build back its navy in time to matter, which is a tremendous issue given how we do our commerce and where some of our deepest friends are physically located.
https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/436695...
> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.
I think there needs to be more awareness on how dire the navies situation is. Most Americans assume the 100s of Billions per year to the USN keeps us at some unparalleled level, but that doesn't seem likely to hold true.
In the early 2000’s, that didn't matter so much, but the loss of institutional knowledge, capability and manufacturing capacity is now at the point that it seems unlikely to be fixed without a significant amount of public interest and a huge amount of investment, neither of which seem likely without some crisis, at which point it will likely be too late.