I know many of my readers here are older men, and older men are famous for their love of military history, so I’m asking one of you to explain it to me like I’m five: Why would we be investing in a new class of naval battleships, when naval battleships haven’t been relevant to modern warfare since the Second World War? And how many times have we been told the next war will be fought with drones and software? How do battleships play into that?
Seriously, I want to know. This makes no sense to me.
I know I’ve been scarce around here of late, and I will likely be scarce going forward. I’m writing this while watching my kitchen floor dry, and I still have a few things to do before I’m ready for the holiday. So let this be the last one for a while, unless some photos present themselves. I wish every last one of you Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you observe, including Festivus. I do not have a lot of problems with your people, because in fact, you’re the best.
Back later.
Mark P said on December 23, 2025 at 11:03 am
That was exactly my thought — battleships have been obsolete for naval warfare since WW 2. But then what Trump, in his infinite ignorance, is thinking of is not a battleship, but more like a missile cruiser or something, like the pride of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. That’s the one that a country without a navy sank in a land war. I am pretty sure that Navy planners are rolling their eyes right about now. Trump, in his infinitely infinite ignorance, said the ship will be completed in a couple of years.
As Lucy Van Pelt apocryphally says, “Christ. What an asshole.”
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David C said on December 23, 2025 at 11:16 am
Because Trump and Kegseth have the minds of 12 year olds and a not very bright ones at that. They probably saw a WWII movie and thought they looked cool. The Ukraine war has changed everything about how wars are conducted. I’m sure the brass knows it. The civilians, not so much. I work in defense industry building military trucks. I was talking to my supervisor last week and we were talking about seeing all the Russian trucks and tanks that Ukraine has blown up using cheap drones. I kinda feel that trucks on the front lines are obsolete. We need to be asking hard questions and those two knuckleheads aren’t up to the task. I think they look at the way Russia is conducting the war and thinking they need to be doing that because marching soldiers to be slaughtered seems like the tough guy way. It’s just another example of how totally fucked we are. If the country is lucky, it’ll be unfucked before we all die. I doubt we’re going to be lucky.
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scott said on December 23, 2025 at 11:31 am
Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money will probably have a post about this eventually. It’s his expertise. Trump’s current term will be up before this gets off a drawing board. That’s before getting US shipyards out of mothballs. We could always have China build one or 27.
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Sherri said on December 23, 2025 at 11:46 am
Since Trump apparently believes that stealth planes can’t be seen with the naked eye, they should just tell him that that the new Trump class ships are even more amazing stealth technology: even the missiles can’t be seen, and the wake of the ship is hidden as well. The materials themselves are invisible, so you can’t even see it under construction unless you wear special goggles.
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tajalli said on December 23, 2025 at 12:15 pm
The Emperor’s New Battleships.
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alex said on December 23, 2025 at 12:34 pm
Like Tubby’s ballroom, it’s going to be massive and frivolously gaudy and have his name on it and that’s the only thing that matters, utility be damned.
I have a feeling that “Trump class” is going to be a new branding effort on a whole lot of ridiculous stuff that’s yet to be announced let alone even conceived. It’s a joke that’s going to follow him around long after he has croaked because he doesn’t have any class, just excruciatingly bad taste and even worse judgment, and as mentioned upthread most of this shit will never come to pass while he’s in office and surely not once he’s out of it.
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