As is often the case, the Dumbest Timeline and Meanwhile in North Korea collide. Defense News reports: Trump-class battleship program will cost $275 billion, CBO report says.
The potential cost of the Navy’s new nuclear-powered battleship procurement program is estimated to be an eyewatering $275 billion, with the first Trump-class battleship (BBG(X)) costing $23.4 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office report published Wednesday.
The Trump administration in December announced its intention to build a new class of large surface combatants, designated as the Trump-class guided missile battleship.
The naming of these as the “Trump-class” covers the North Korea part pretty well, although it certainly contributes to the dumbness rather substantially.
But the truly dumb part is that this is Trump guiding US policy based not on expertise or sound advice, but because he has some vague notion of the way things used to be when he was a kid. His yearning to recreate an idealized past, but with a new coat of paint (likely gold) and some new gizmos, continues unabated.
After all, this is the guy who wants new aircraft carriers redesigned because he has a fondness for how they are supposed to look (in his mind). As The Hill reported: Navy considers major aircraft carrier revamp to better suit Trump’s aesthetic.
The Navy is performing an internal review to weigh the possibility of moving the multistory aircraft carrier’s command center tower, known as the “island,” toward the middle of the vessel to better match the aesthetic of older warships, a former senior U.S. official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, told The Hill on Sunday.
The review, which was kick-started in part because of Trump’s concerns about the aesthetics of the Ford-class aircraft carriers, is due in “several” weeks, the official said.
Reportedly, Trump wants the new carriers to look more like the WWII-era craft. This is just more reactionary nostalgia.
And, of course, there’s his obsession with steam.
On Thursday, Trump directed the Navy to remove the electromagnetic catapult system on aircraft carriers and revert back to using steam catapult systems, an adjustment that officials and experts say would cost billions of dollars and would hamper operational efficiency.
Additional dumbness is relevant to the battleship because, as best I can tell (and I am not an expert on naval warfare), we don’t need this type of ship.
I would recommend this detailed CSIS write-up from December: The Golden Fleet’s Battleship Will Never Sail.
All of this is just a further example, in a mountain of them, of the foolishness of giving all this power to a huckster who loves attention and thinks putting his name on things and/or painting/designating them gold is both his right and a really classy thing to do.
And, of course, the added cost of all this shouldn’t be forgotten. For all his rhetoric about getting rid of wasteful spending, there is no doubt in my mind that Trump was engaged in more gratuitous and avoidable wastefulness than any president in history.
In passing, here’s another item for the “can you imagine how Fox News would react if Obama did it” pile via USNI News: New White House Memo Calls for Foreign-Built Warships, Return to Steam Catapults on Ford Carriers.
By law, American warships and cutters have to be built in the U.S., but the president has broad authority to waive that requirement for general “national security interests.”
[…]
Congress is trying to halt the executive push for foreign shipbuilding, with the Senate Armed Services Committee in its draft of the FY 2027 defense policy bill removing the presidential waiver authority from Title 10 that allows the commander-in-chief to use an undefined “national security interest” exception to buy foreign warships for the U.S. armed forces. The draft legislation would allow the Pentagon to purchase auxiliary ships from allies.
By the way, one of the ways to make the Navy’s defense of global waterways more effective is to have plenty of friends around the world and also not to start pointless wars near geostrategic choke points.
