Trump stated at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday that the battleships would be a part of a larger plan to establish a “Golden Fleet” that would aid in maintaining US naval dominance.
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The US president made the announcement while seated next to a rendering of the new ships, which appeared to have his emblazoned logo on them.
“We had large battleships,” he said. These are larger. There has never been anything like these ships, according to Trump, and they’ll have 100 times the force and power of the old ships.
He added that the ships would be “cutting edge” and equipped with the most recent technology, such as directed energy lasers and artificial intelligence. Additionally, they will have rail guns, nuclear cruise missiles, and hypersonic missiles, all of which the US Navy is working on at various stages.
He said, “Each of these will be the largest battleship in the history of our country, the largest battleship in the history of the world.”
Trump downplayed the notion that the new ships were intended to “counter any” allies, claiming that they were “a counter to everyone.”
Production would begin with two ships, according to the US president, but it could increase to 10, and to 25 over an undisclosed amount of time.
Trump claimed that the first ship would be named the USS Defiant and that “immediate work would begin” on the first two ships.
The new Trump-class warship is described as a spiritual successor to the battleships of the 20th century by both Trump and Navy Secretary John Phelan, but historically the term has only been used to refer to a very specific type of ship: a large, heavily armored, armed vessel designed to attack other ships or targets ashore.
The Iowa-class, the largest of the US battleships, was a sizeable 60 000 ton during World War II, when this type of ship gained notoriety. However, due to the rapid decline in the use of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles in contemporary fleets after World War II.
Trump made references to the documentary about naval warfare during the Second World War and the Great White Fleet, which was commissioned by former US President Theodore Roosevelt in the early 20th century.
“Victory at Sea,” . Victory at Sea was a classic, he said, adding that the new ships would “maintain American military supremacy”.
This new “guided missile battleship” is expected to be roughly the same size as battleships from the Iowa-class, but it will have much smaller crews, between 650 and 850 sailors, and be about the same size as those from the newly developed Golden Fleet website.
Its main weaponry will be missiles, not large naval guns, either.
Trump claimed that the naval expansion would coincide with renewed pressure on defense contractors to reduce costs and speed up production.
He stated that he will meet with major defense companies the following week to discuss delays and overruns and to assess whether executive compensation, stock buybacks, and dividends are preventing production targets.
Source: Aljazeera
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