> I'm assuming that, if this rumor is true, somebody in the Trump campaign forced somebody at NASA to do this out of some misguided nostalgia.
Why would you assume that?
Why would you assume that?
See this comment for a quick set of links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49910639
It would be shocking if it wasn’t what was happening - resurrecting the SR71 makes no sense, just like resurrecting the idea of a battleship. Tech has far eclipsed their usefulness.
It’s the military budget being prioritized based on boomer nostalgia, not any actual plausible fit to reality.
That's the same kind of silliness as calling the Russian Kirov class 'battlecruisers' in my opinion. It's not going to stand in the line of battle and exchange shells with other battleships is it?
At the end of the day the Navy is seeing Orange Man offer a them a check to build the cruiser they've wanted for decades. They'll finally have the space and power to do all kinds of things they can't pull off on a destroyer hull (even if said "destroyer" is really a cruiser in other clothing). If they have to call it a BBN or whatever to make Trump happy they'll do it.
I agree with the manipulating the nostalgia angle, the real plan just isn’t anything like an actual battleship, and the approval is also because they’re using ‘battleship’ to manipulate the nostalgia.
The Trump-class is pretty clearly one of those interim study projects that only exists to fill a perceived gap in force composition. Unlike the USAF NGAD, I don't think the Trump-class will ever see the light of day, let alone a battle versus a peer-power.
The now-cancelled DDG(X) next-generation destroyer already had a larger displacement than a heavy cruiser. And it was cancelled for not being large enough to support its mission load-out as a modern destroyer.
The name “battleship” may be archaic but the displacement requirements for the next-generation destroyers (or whatever they are eventually called) are roughly in “light battleship” territory.
To put it another way, we were calling battleship-class ships “destroyers” for historical continuity reasons. Over time, ships in a class have become much larger but we kept the old names. Even the older Arleigh-Burke destroyers would be traditionally classified as heavy cruisers if they were commanded by a flag officer.
On one side we have a battleship. $2B in current dollars for a WWII ship.
On the other side we have 10% of that value in harpoonskis.
The battleship never reaches gun range.
Naval gunfire has use against targets not worthy of a missile. But anything you're going to be shooting it at doesn't have armor to speak of.