The Trump Class Battleship

This is not a Cold War Story, but I am not starting up another blog site, and Cold War Stories is the nearest on topic.  <edited for clarity>

Dec 22, 2025, our incompetent-commander in chief has made an announcement of the Trump class "Battleship."
To quote, "We haven't built a battleship since 1994. These cutting-edge vessels will be some of the most lethal surface warfare ships"...
..."Each ship would displace more than 30,000 tons to 40,000 tons and serve as a flagship of the U.S. fleet."

"These battleships would be equipped with advanced weapons, including hypersonic missiles, electric rail guns and high-powered laser systems, as well as nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missiles currently under development."

And finally, "start procuring two ships, working up to 10 and eventually 20 ships to 25 ships in total, and would aim to have the first two within two and a half years. "

What is wrong with this statement? 

"We haven't built a battleship since 1994." The truth is, the US hasn't completed a battleship since 1944.

I don't know what they told him was completed in 1994. Launched that year was a helicopter carrier, a mine sweeper and a few submarines and several Arleigh Burke destroyers. The first of it's class was commissioned three years earlier. At around 9,000 tonnes*, the Arleigh Burkes are large for destroyers, but far smaller than the 45,000 tonnes of an Iowa class battleship.

"Each ship would displace more than 30,000 tons to 40,000 tons." 30 to 40,000 tonnes IS in the battleship range. The class previous to the Iowa was 35,000. This is in line with many of their contemporaries in WWII. But the term battleships has to do with not so much their punch, but their ability to take a punch. Battleships were designed, by in large, to be "proof" against the same sized gun they were armed with. 

We no longer have an industry that can create the armor for a battleship any more. The Iowa's waterline belt armor was 12" thick, while the turret armor was 19". The industry to produce this armor does not exist anywhere in the world.  And if it did, it would be a waste of resources to make a battleship resistant to take hits from contemporary weapons. Like the Russian supersonic KH22. Striking at mach 4, with a ton of explosive. A dozen of those would ruin the Iowa.

A large, fast, heavily armed warship, in the tonnage range of 30 to 40,000 would be a "battlecruiser." Over the years, nations have built these. Their overall mission was to run down and destroy smaller ships. And for that mission they did OK**. But when they ran into actual battleships, the battle went against the battle cruisers badly.***

"These battleships would be equipped with advanced weapons, including hypersonic missiles, electric rail guns and high-powered laser systems, as well as nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missiles currently under development." The US IS working on hypersonic missiles. But not yet ready for prime time. The rail gun project was canceled in 2023. Lasers DO exist and are being deployed in with ever more powerful wattage. But they are still strictly point defenses. Sea launched cruise missiles, including nuclear variants, have existed for decades. And can be mounted on significantly smaller platforms. Including as small as the Al Sadiq class patrol boats we built for the Saudi's in the 80's.

In short, a "battleship" is not needed for any of these weapons. And is in fact a detriment. Need 300 missiles to off load somewhere, bring in 3 Arleigh Burkes. At a cost of around 2 billion per ship.

A 35,000 ton "battleship?" What would that cost? The Ford class carrier, at 3 times the weight was 13 billion or so. Plus 5 billion R&D. So a third of that would be in the range of 3 Arleigh Burkes. 

But the battleship can only be in one place at a time, the Arleigh Burkes in this example, 3 places. It is just one of the reasons battleships are no longer used.  A battleship could control the ocean around 25 miles around it. A carrier about 500 miles. Now in the missile world, this radius does increase for the battleship. But with inflight refueling, the carrier also has a much increased radius.

Then there is the cost to run one of these things. Manpower isn't cheap.  The Ford is 4,200 men. This gives us a guesstamate of 1,400 men for the battleship. 3 Arleigh Burkes is 1,050. The Iowa was 2,700. 

I realize the last 4 paragraphs kinda make this look like a somewhat reasonable project. I was expecting the numbers to be totally out of whack. So moving on.

This ship exists right now as only some AI generated art to stroke the presidents ego. It will never exist. A warship are THE most complicated machines man has ever built. It takes a serious amount of time to architect a one. The Constellation class frigate, 7,300 tons, they started work on that in 2017. They have yet to cut any metal for it. And that is armed with weapons we know how to make. 

"aim to have the first two within two and a half years." It was 15 years from the concept of a plan for the USS Ford to first cutting of the steel. And commissioning 12 years later. 27 years from concept to reality. The Orange muppet in office is 80 years old.

I cannot expect the president not to know squat about the fleet he is playing with. But this has the tacit approval of the Navy Secretary, John Phelan, who should. 

This is clearly more stroking the the Incompetent-in-Chief's ego, and everyone in the oval office is just waiting for him to die.  

*Flight 1 8,300 tonnes, Flight III 9,700 tonnes.
 
 **Battle cruisers HMS Inflexible and Invincible verses cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Falkland_Islands

 *** Most famously the battlecruiser HMS Hood verses  KMS Bismarck or the IJN Kirishima v USS Washington

 

 

 

 

 

Fast Action Reporting Team

Stolen with permission from Dennis Largess
Reprinted from Sax and Violets. 

Besides the obvious duties of sailors at sea, there are also "collateral" duties. These can be easy, like making coffee for the mess, or really onerous like mess cooking (mess cranking) for months at a time. 

Back in 1975, one of those duties was Photo Intelligence (PHOTINT). Each ship had a regulation camera to make visual records of any intelligence opportunity. Now, that was a problem because the Navy was winding down from Vietnam. As people transferred to different ships, or left the service, we often got no replacements to fill the gaps. As a result, it was very challenging to get dog-tired sailors to do extra work when a Soviet ship showed up.

On the way to our Northern Europe cruise, the Captain recognized that the Photo Intel Team wasn't doing anything. It had become just a collateral joke. 

So, he sat me down and said I was the new Photo Intelligence Officer. And that it was my job to motivate the team to do good work. 

This was not welcome news, since I was already filling in for the position of Electronic Material besides my assigned billet, plus about six collateral duties. 

Seeing my face drop, the Captain gave me some advice: find a way to make the team enthusiastic - make it enjoyable and something they would want to do. 

"Gee thanks, Captain." I thought. Well, first trying to figure this out, I thought photography aficionados would be enthusiastic about taking pictures and using the authorized camera. 

There were some photo fans but the thought of possibly losing more sleep and using the POS regulation camera was not appealing. 

That left the other suggestion, to make it fun! 

At that time, the duty funny man onboard was Radio Chief Charlie Brown. He came across as an easy going guy and the Radiomen loved him. He didn't try to be a hard-ass and was easy to work for. However, if you screwed up, he became a towering chief at the drop of a hat. What made him my resource was his unending stream of jokes. None of which I can put down as they were clearly not meant for the sensitive ears of women or children. 

I had one idea to rename the team. Before leaving Norfolk, the Ringling Brothers Circus ran some radio ads. They had a problem with their animals. Every day the animals created about a ton of defecation. Getting rid of that for a week was very trying and not a little bit expensive. 

So they had a give away. "Do you have plants in your garden that need some TLC? We have lion poopoo for your lilies - we have zebra poopoo for your azaleas - we have elephant poopoo for your elms. Just bring your own bag and help yourselves." 

In the background, a horrified voice exclaimed, "You can't sell poopoo on the radio!" 

"Oh, we're selling it!  We are giving it away!" 

Silly as this sounds, it worked. Sailors that had no interest in the circus, or in zoos, laughed and went. 

Thinking about this and how they grabbed the sailors, it seemed something funny like that ad, might get some enthusiasm. 

After lunch one day, the wardroom was empty and I invited the Chief to hear me out. 

Well, living as pigs - like one does in the wardroom - he preferred to talk in the Chief's Mess, a.k.a. The Goat Locker. This was unexpected as the Chief's Mess is sacrosanct to us mere chauffeurs and I jumped at the chance. 

There didn't seem much special there that one could see, but the privacy was appreciated, and the coffee was definitely a grade better. 

I explained the problem to the Chief, and my idea was to rename the Photo Intel team to the Fast Action Reporting Team, or the FART. 

Well, his eyes lit up and he was off to the races. I would become the Fast Action Reporting Officer. the FARO. 

The former Photo officer would be the Primary Observing Officer, the POO. 

The senior enlisted photographer would be the Senior Naval Investigator for the FART, the SNIFF. 

The recorder was to be the Foto Edit Coder Enlisted Specialist, the FECES. 

He came up with like five more acronyms like these. I was writing fast to keep up. 

Well, to get it up and running we typed the idea up and looked for the Captain. He was sitting in his chair on the bridge talking to the XO. The Captain saw us waiting and asked what was up, expecting to hear that some radio equipment was down. 

I handed the typed up sheet over and he looked at it. He got that loopy, lopsided grin that showed occasionally. 

Handing it to the XO, "What do you think, Gerry?" XO took one look and seemed about to gag. 

Before he got a word out, the Captain said let's try it. And damned if it didn't work. Instead of another chore, it became some kind of a game. When the bridge spotted a Soviet, then over the 1MC announcing system, "Away the FART." And people volunteered to be part of the team. It sounds like something out of a boy's magazine, but as usual Captain Boorda knew his sailors.

One Submarine's Race to the Bottom

It has been a while since I had a new sea story for my collection.  This was submitted by Commander David Campbell, USN (ret) 

My boat the USS GUARDFISH and it was attempting a repair on the surface in heavy seas.  Where specifically is classified. A rogue wave came up at least 20 plus feet and broke over the Bridge with the bridge access hatches open. The hatches were open because the bridge was manned by the Officer of the Deck and his lookout. The top of the bridge, referred to as the sail on a submarine or fair water, is just 13 and 1/2 feet above the main deck in a dead calm. 

The sea state at this time was running at 4 -6 feet. When the wave broke over the boat sail it also drove the boat down and thus we were taking a solid stream of water down the down both the upper and lower bridge access hatches.  A cable is always running down these hatches which is connected for this class boat to the bridge control box which shows rudder angle and compass course from the gyro. 

USS Guardfish, Underway, planet Earth

This stream of water hit the bottom of the ladder in the Control Room and went both port, shorting out the MK 113 Fire Control console and starboard, into the ship diving console, then onto the Ballast Control Panel so we lost most of the ships control instrumentation. The fan room flooded through the outboard induction valve as were also surface ventilating the boat, which drained to the torpedo room, so we also had flooding in the Torpedo Room. 

The Diving Officer of the Watch yanked the bridge control box cable free of the bridge control box and then shut the lower bridge access hatch. The Captain now in Control ordered the outboard induction valve to be overridden to “SHUT”, as we had no control or proper valve position indication on the BCP (See above. The TLA's* are going to fly fast and loose now, ). An unqualified officer then ran into the bow compartment pushed the Fwd Aux. Room Watch stander out of the way, as it was his job to do the override, and then pushed override palm valve for the Fwd Group Main Ballast Tank Vent Valves, to open instead of the Outboard Induction Valve Palm valve next to the OIV (see above). This hydraulically opened the Fwd Group Vents. Thus caused the boat to start submerging with the OOD and Lookout isolated on the bridge due to the lower bridge access hatch being shut. 

Needless to say things got slightly dicey as the OOD and crew went through the process of overriding the OIV  and Fwd Group Main Ballast Tank Vent Valves shut, blowing the Fwd Group MBT Ballast Tanks to put air back into these tanks to keep the boat on the surface. 

The key point is the boat took a huge rogue wave over the bridge w/ the upper and lower access hatches open and the crew took actions to mitigate this casualty. Thus the boat DID NOT SINK and it took a short period of time to recover all systems and bring the boat back to full operational capabilities.

--Commander David Campbell

 *Three Letter Acronyms