THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE.
The last U.S. battleship, the USS Missouri, was commissioned in 1944. These huge ships were primarily tasked with shore bombardment during WW II. U.S. battleships saw combat for the last time in the 1991 Gulf War, when the USS Missouri and USS Wisconsin provided naval gunfire support and launched cruise missiles against Iraqi targets.
Now, Donald T**** has announced plans for a new “T**** class” of very large surface vessels as part of a so‑called Golden Fleet, describing them in public as new U.S. “battleships.” Public descriptions of these vessels emphasize size, prestige and advanced weapons but do not define clear Navy doctrine beyond generic roles like deterrence, power projection, and fleet strengthening.
No-one will probably ever see one. Designing and building a new generation of navy ships isn’t cheap. The aircraft carrier USS H. W. Bush, an advanced Nimitz-class carrier commissioned in 2009, took over ten years to build at a cost of some $13 billion, and T****will have to ask Congress for funding. He can’t just take his tariff money.
Money from tariffs goes into the U S. Treasury’s general fund and is used for general government expenses. And no matter how much he may want to, T**** can’t just use those funds for whatever he wants. Besides, the next administration can kill the project before it’s off the drawing board.
Trump has bragged that the vessels will be larger, faster and “100 times more powerful” than any previous navy vessel ever built. But it’s just bragging. Ships this huge, including just about all of America’s aircraft carries, are anachronistic in the 21st century.
A recent NY Times article described how these huge, lumbering ships can easily be taken out by weapons such as hypersonic missiles, which both Russia and China have in their military arsenals but we don’t. These things fly at Mach 5, that’s five times the speed of sound. At that rate, they can cover a distance of 100 miles in less than a minute, making traditional reaction times impossible.
T****- class battleships? Golden Fleet? Don’t bet on it. It’s just Delusional Donnie’s brain dribbling nonsense in public, one more time.
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