103
I caught the orange man talking on the radio, as I am not american I knew it was going to be something stupid but this? I thought it was a joke, an onion like thing, but nooooo. What sealed it is when in the very speech about the new 100x battleships, trump stated that he did not know why the us stopped using battleships....
Firstly, yes this is colossally stupid at first glance. Trump is an egoist and an idiot, and he’d absolutely want a fleet of the biggest ships ever named after him so he can wave his tiny dick around for decades after he dies. However, I believe this is a renamed project that was already in development, not a new thing Trump wanted made. The main thing that makes this interesting to me and makes me consider why it might be more practical than the name leads on is the inclusion of a high powered laser system. With sufficient power, a naval laser could literally be the ultimate tool for naval combat and completely negate the weaknesses of a battleship style design. I’m not sure this ship will have a laser that powerful, but if it’s in the megawatt range then it could very well be essentially invulnerable to most modern aircraft and missiles. The US military even before Trump was focusing heavily on lasers in new developments as they’re likely going to define warfare in the next few decades, if not longer. There’s good reason for this, a sufficiently powerful laser could be able to destroy any unshielded aircraft or missile within seconds. The primary limiting factor for their effectiveness is getting to that power range in a portable form (which a nuclear ship solves), and turret rotation which basically limits the number of targets they can engage. One of the proposed Lockheed Martin F-47’s primary new features is an aerosol dispenser designed for laser defense, in another example of laser focused design. As silly as it is to call them battleships, this legitimately might be a decent call for a design. A fast, large ship with high power, long range guns and a laser defense system that protects it from missiles and aircraft to allow it to get in range to use those guns. If nothing else, it’s a big platform for missiles and has a decent gun for shore bombardment purposes. I think 100 of them might be crazy, though.