Trump battleship

[FTBSS]

30,000 ton surface combatant can't wait to see the weapon systems planned for the Trump class that will lead the Golden Fleet.

[zclark]

Specs can be found here.
https://www.goldenfleet.navy.mil/

[HalfLifeExpert]

What a joke.

The displacement on this monstrosity is comparable to the old South Dakota BBs that served in WW2.

The US defense establishment is apparently incapable of building a new frigate without exponentially mushrooming the cost and time to just get the damned keel laid.

There's no way this floating money pit will ever see the light of day, let alone 20 of them.

[gregb41352]

The man is clearly insane. It's 25th amendment time. No way we can do this for another 3 years.

[lumiere]

One of good things of CMO is that, you can deploy them (or any expensive super-capable platforms) as many as you want no matter how they were infeasible IRL due to financial/logistical/political reasons.

[turmoil]

Apart from the million things wrong here, isn't the first ship of the class generally named the same as the class?
Imagine being so egotistical you name the class after yourself lmfao because it sure as hell wasn't anyone else coming up with this ...thing

[BDukes]

This doesn't look that serious yet, even the drawing seems like a hastily put together AI slop image. Pessimistic side says this is vanity project. Optimistic side is this is a way get shipbuilding going again in the US (although they mentioned a Korean company..hehe).

Ok entertaining this a bit:

• How are they powering this ship which will have significant power requirements. Its got to be nuclear.

• Antidrone stuff needs to be in line with where things are going. Will need EW, low cost interceptor mounts and possibly

microwave stuff. Mk.38s should be updated to match MADIS configurations. ODIN and other laser types fine as well.

• No mention of ASW systems. Will at least need a hull sonar and self defense suite assuming the rest of the SAG will be screening it.

[schweggy]

My first inclination is that this is a vanity project. Ego driven.

But, the Navy has in the past made the case for something similar. Call it whatever... a battleship, arsenal ship, missile cruiser, etc. Loaded with long-range land/surface missiles, drones, hypersonics or whatever else is on the horizon and it'd be formidable in areas that require this sort of power projection. It could also be just a ruse to get adversaries to spend time, money and resources on their own "battleships" or counter measures for it. Shipbuilding in the US has deteriorated to the point that it's almost a joke... aside from the submarine business. If this jumpstarts that...

[thewood1]

The concept seems no different than other "big ship" proposals in the past. I find it amusing someone mentioned power. The Iowa class displaced 45k tons and we had no issues powering that without a nuke plant.

edit...looking at that website there's probably more detail for a CMO spec than most proposed units. I wonder how long they've been working on it. Even if it comes of very little, if it helps inject some capital into shipbuilding in the US, I'm for it.

[thewood1]

The man is clearly insane. It's 25th amendment time. No way we can do this for another 3 years.

How about taking these types of comments someplace else if you want to rant? There are plenty of places to do that and not start a bunch BS here. Don' bother apologizing, not that I expect it. Just move on.

[HalfLifeExpert]

The man is clearly insane. It's 25th amendment time. No way we can do this for another 3 years.

How about taking these types of comments someplace else if you want to rant? There are plenty of places to do that and not start a bunch BS here. Don' bother apologizing, not that I expect it. Just move on.

Wood is right. I'm not really in disagreement with Greg, but this isn't the place for that kind of comment. Politics are only allowed in a somewhat limited capacity in this forum, when it is directly relevant to what Command depicts.

The concept seems no different than other "big ship" proposals in the past. I find it amusing someone mentioned power. The Iowa class displaced 45k tons and we had no issues powering that without a nuke plant.

The Iowa Class, even with the final modernizations, didn't have Railguns, lasers, or supercomputers. This....thing....will have some serious electricity demands that might not be cost-effective enough without a reactor or two. Fuel costs/logistics may not make it very effective strategically.

Maybe a hybrid system would be needed, with a reactor and a fuel-engine.

And of course, it would also need anti-EMP shielding, as Tactical EMP Weapons are going to be a thing.

[Blast33]

Is this sentence below, one to be able to back-out, when deemed neccesary?

"We will ensure continuous improvement, intellectually honest assessments about the requirement..."
https://www.goldenfleet.navy.mil/

[Zaslon]

I dont think it is suitable for modern naval battles.
Also I dont think that American shipyards can build such a complex ship. Not anymore. Freedom Class, Zumwalt class, Constellation class..too many cancellations.

Did America lost their capability to build any other ship than submarines and Aicraft carriers?

[SunlitZelkova]

We are still building Arleigh Burkes. My understanding is that the issue is with capacity more than capability.

Building one of these isn't the issue, it is building 20 of them, while building other things.

Personally, I don't think a single ship design will solve the problem. This is an industry problem (i.e. economics... outside the scope of CMO). The Trump-class BBs (BBGs?) may end up having all the same issues as the Constellations.

It would be interesting to know what the mentality is that guided the requirement for this ship. If the capability of the Ticonderogas could be replaced by Arleigh Burkes, what will this ship do that couldn't be done by just buying more Burkes?

[HalfLifeExpert]

I think the US has the technical capacity to build warships. Arleigh Burkes are still being built afterall.

What's ruining the process is red-tape, poor project management and generally just having too many cooks in the kitchen.

With the Constellations, a design contest was held, I think 4 or 5 designs were presented, and one was chosen.

Then, they took the winning design, and changed practically everything, skyrocketing the cost and time for production. Then they just gave up.

I feel the point-of-failure here is in defense acquisition processes, rather than in the technical challenges.

[boogabooga]

I immediately thought of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj4ys1_2fAY

[Mgellis]

[Removes funny but inflammatory remark about how we could name these ships.]

Interestingly, if people want to play around with this idea, the hypothetical CGN 21, ID #4447, which displaces about 25,000 tons, is not a bad starting point. I suspect the ship would have to be nuclear-powered to handle the energy requirement issues.

People have mentioned the issue of a vanity project. I wonder if the Navy is fully aware that they don't really need battleships right now, but understands there is now political support for this project, and so they just dusted off one of the CG 21 proposals, made a few cosmetic changes, and are using it as a way to distract those politicians for whom "battleships" are a bright, shiny object that they want because it is pretty. I suspect most navies have had to deal with this problem on occasion.

Personally, I have no idea if this new kind of putting-a-whole-lot-of-eggs-in-one-basket big surface combatant is a good idea or not. I simply don't have the engineering background to judge that. Maybe it has to be a large ship to house the power plant necessary to power all those lasers, rail guns, etc.? (I assume this is the reason we build such large carriers, that you need a huge ship just to house 20 aircraft, so you might as well make it twice as big but be able to carry four or five times as many planes and helicopters.) I do see the advantage of rail guns, if we can make them work...range, low cost per shot, etc. I also wonder if a combined missile cruiser and drone carrier (e.g., something like the Kiev class, but with missiles, tons of small semi-disposable half-ton robot aircraft, AND a rail gun) would be a better design. Again, I don't know enough about engineering for this to be anything but speculation.

On the issue of shipbuilding...let's say there was genuine good reason and sufficient political will on both sides of the aisle to build a new class of large surface combatant. Assuming optimistic but realistic conditions, how long would it take to rebuild our shipbuilding industry, create new shipyards, train the necessary workforce, etc. to be able to build the ships we're already building AND add one new battleship-like vessel every three or four years?

The man is clearly insane. It's 25th amendment time. No way we can do this for another 3 years.

How about taking these types of comments someplace else if you want to rant? There are plenty of places to do that and not start a bunch BS here. Don' bother apologizing, not that I expect it. Just move on.

Wood is right. I'm not really in disagreement with Greg, but this isn't the place for that kind of comment. Politics are only allowed in a somewhat limited capacity in this forum, when it is directly relevant to what Command depicts.

The concept seems no different than other "big ship" proposals in the past. I find it amusing someone mentioned power. The Iowa class displaced 45k tons and we had no issues powering that without a nuke plant.

The Iowa Class, even with the final modernizations, didn't have Railguns, lasers, or supercomputers. This....thing....will have some serious electricity demands that might not be cost-effective enough without a reactor or two. Fuel costs/logistics may not make it very effective strategically.

Maybe a hybrid system would be needed, with a reactor and a fuel-engine.

And of course, it would also need anti-EMP shielding, as Tactical EMP Weapons are going to be a thing.

[thewood1]

The biggest issue with warship building in the US is capacity. There are only a couple shipyards capable of building large warships and they have limited slips. It would take a lot of capital investment just to increase the number of slips. The second issue is knowledge in specific trades. There just aren't enough physical people with the necessary skills to build, rivet, and weld right now. You would have to almost make it like a WW2 ramp up to get there in two years.

[Mgellis]

I recently watched the new version of this...people who play Command might like it. It's space opera, rather than hard sf or technothriller, but it's a lot of fun. The animation is excellent. Lots and lots eye of candy action sequences based on the lunatic concept that you could somehow fight World War II naval battles in space (they even have "submarines"). And the story is...wow...it's like Star Wars, if all nine movies were good. It's truly a fun watch.

(I wonder if I should watch the series again and try to model some of the battles with the early Cold War ships available in the CWDB. Of course, I'd have to make a lot of changes like using islands in the place of planets, etc. Hmmm...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYWvOBTIIps

I immediately thought of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj4ys1_2fAY

[c3k]

Random thoughts in SUPPORT of a modern BB-concept ship:

1. ARMOR. ARMOR. ARMOR. Current ships seem to be eggshells with hammers. Everyone assumes nukes, so armor would be negated, so we have thin-hulled ships. However, rational minds have prevailed in all conflicts since nuclear weapons were first used. I would think that conventional combat would continue. In what sense is 12" of hardened steel bad to have on ship? It's got to have some better protection against the HE rounds. Most missiles have "soft" penetrators. They rely on pure HE, possibly some HEAT (but that's easily mitigated.) So, armor would help survivability, yes?

2. Magazine depth. Current USN has great difficulties, almost impossibilities, for underway rearmament of the VLS cells. (doctrine still does not support? I know a test was done, but it was fraught with difficulties and needed dead calm). USN ships are good for about one engagement. CMO opened my eyes to this and how deterministic modern naval combat can be.

3. Increased displacement (even accounting for the weight of armor and how it takes up other capabilities) allows longer cruises, higher cruising speed (hull length), and more power generation/fuel space. (Nuclear would be appropriate.)

4. More weapons can be fitted on a larger ship. I thought the Japanese were progressing with a rail gun. Some sort of projectile weapon is still needed, as are the autocannon. But the laser defenses? Okay, dwell time, atmospheric absorption, etc. But with more space and energy, you can have more/better sensors including O/D ECM. Drones? Fry 'em.
Torpedoes/Underwater drones? Err...

Random thoughts AGAINST:

1. Big ship, same weakness as others: one good hit knocks it out of the fight. (As I understand modern naval architecture.) The counter-argument assumes armor.

2. More, smaller, ships would be more effective. The same VLS numbers would be spread out amongst others.

3. The US has been shown to be incompetent in building modern warships. This is a stretch. (Maybe that's the point? Reinvigorate US shipbuilding?)

4. Other than VLS, the rest of the weaponry seems to be far-fetched.