The Trump Class

Yesterday, Trump announced the Trump Class or (BBG(X)if you follow the navy’s traditional naming convention of proposed ship projects) of guided-missile battleships. Today (or maybe possibly yesterday, I wasn’t paying attention) the navy has released some specifications. The program will replace DDG(X) program that was started in 2022 by the Biden admin which wanted it to fill the hole the canceling of the Zumwalt’s left. If they are ever built (a big if), they will likely be the centerpiece of the ‘Golden Fleet’ which I assume is a tacky version of the Greet White Fleet, which was meant to showcase US naval power in the early 1900s by circumnavigating the globe with a bunch of battleships. I thought I might go through the specs and try to see if this is purely a project to boost Trump’s ego, or an actual warship. Some people in defense spaces question whether the battleship designation is either something to boost trumps ego or an appropriate designation for such a ship. I tend to think future reef would be the best one, but considering its size compared to other surface combat ships I think battleship is an actually appropriate designation. At 35,000 tons or more, they will be 10,000 tons larger than the Kirov class battlecruisers. With a length of 840-880 feet, they would be 300 feet shorter than the Gerald R. Ford class carriers and 300 feet longer than the Ticonderoga class cruisers.

Starting with the Sea Launched Cruise Missile – Nuclear, which is a program that just started development earlier this year. They will likely use existing missile platforms like Tomahawk, which previously was capable of carrying nuclear warheads, although they were all retired. The use case scenario for these is against surface groups or large ground facilities. They would be low yield, so they likely aren’t part of the US’s second strike capabilities.

12 Cells of the Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic missile system. This is the most interesting thing in the specs, CPS is a program to develop a “precision-guided conventional weapon strike anywhere in the world within an hour.” The US army recently entered into service the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, or Dark Eagle if you are a 12-year old boy who thinks that sounds cool, which is a precursor to the CPS. What doesn’t make much sense is that the point of it having a similar range as an ICBM is that you don’t need to be that close to launch it, you might put it on a submarine to conceal the launch location or on land where it can be more easily protected, but you wouldn’t put it on a highly monitored and visible ship.

128 Mk 41 VLS cells. The low number of cells doesn’t make much sense, only 6 more cells (18 if you count CPS) than a Ticonderoga class at 15,000 more tons. For its size, it leaves underequipped with long range missile defense unless they plan for most of the cells to be used for PATRIOT missiles and for CPS to be the main offensive weapon or if they are really bought in on the rail gun and laser point defense, completely trusting those for close-in missile defense and using other ships long range air-to-surface missiles. The latter of those two options goes against most anti-missile defense doctrine, which is that you should never rely on point defense to do all the work. Based on the current renderings (although I suspect they were created using ai to some degree and are purely theoretical at this stage) the ship would have more than enough deck space for more VLS cells, though open deck space doesn’t guarantee there is enough room in the hull.

1x 32MJ Railgun with HPV. A railgun that has HPV, how futuristic! In all seriousness, it will not have Human Papillomavirus, but it might if RFK bans the HPV vaccine. HPV in this context refers to Hypervelocity Projectile, which is meant to be a guidance system for current 155m artillery and future railguns to be able to intercept ballistic missiles. HPV guidance is need for railguns to become useful weapons, the problem is that railgun ammunition has to be able to survive extreme pressure, temperature, and pressure that a guidance module that doesn’t immediately disintegrate is beyond current human technology. The other problem with railguns is that in their current state is barrel durability, current railguns can only fire about 400 rounds before needing to be replaced and the navy wants them to be able to last 3,000 rounds firing 6 rounds per minute. Despite the technological limitations on practical use, there are reasons to seriously consider railguns as a weapon in the future, they have a long range of up to 350km, they can’t be intercepted, ammunition is relatively cheap as it’s just a rod of metal, and a ship can carry thousands of rounds compare to a few dozen cruise missiles. Railguns are a cool sounding weapon, but I think we may have to wait until we are among the stars for their use to become practical.

2x 5” (127mm) guns that also have HPV guidance units. Not much interesting about these, the navy already seems interested in implementing HPV guidance in existing and future gun systems.

2x 300kW or 2x 600kW lasers. Now we get back to the fun stuff. Lasers are an interesting weapon systems, they have the ability to destroy incoming missiles without using any of your own. The current problem is their range, the ‘Iron Beam’ developed by the zionist entity has a reported range of up to 10km and the HELIOS system which is fine against slower moving targets because it takes some time for the lasers to actually cause enough damage to destroy a projectile, but with hypersonic munitions becoming increasingly prevalent, the may be only effective against one-way-attack UAVs and other relatively slow moving targets. I don’t understand the physics involved, but from what I can gather it is extremely hard to focus enough light onto such a small point and it becomes increasingly harder at longer ranges. Another problem is that they can be rendered useless by a simple smoke-screen or even a dense fog or rain. The PLA has also worked to develop reflective coatings for their munitions that would simply reflect the beams. Overall, I really don’t see lasers such as these making there way onto ships unless these problems are solved.

4x AN/SEQ-4 ODIN. The more practical laser, already installed on 8 USN vessels, they use a dazzling laser that interrupts guidance on optically guided and infrared guided drone and missile sensors. Although it is not capable of hard kills, it is probably a better example of what laser systems are best suited for.

The rest of the weapons are 2x RIM 116, 4x 30mm point defense guns possibly a future version of the Mk44 Bushmaster II, and 2x counter UAV/USV systems which I’m assuming means some type of jamming system.

For the aircraft carried in its rear hanger they are proposing the V-22 osprey or a possible the Future Lift Vehicle which is currently in development (although it wouldn’t surprise anyone if it was canceled). The V-22 is baffling choice for an aircraft, it can’t fit the roles that shipborne helicopters are meant to fill and are well known for being maintenance nightmares and prone to crash aircraft. There’s a reason only the US and Japan operate it. Helicopters have a few main roles when launched from surface combat ships. The first and most important is for anti-submarine warfare, helicopters can launch sonobuoys which are buoys equipped with active or passive sonar sensors which allows for detection of enemy submarines without revealing the ships position to the submarine. After a submarine is detected the helicopter or the ship can launch anti-sub torpedoes to destroy it. The V-22 does not currently have these capabilities, and a new variant would have to be developed specially for the ‘Trump Class’ ships. Other operations, such as search and rescue and infill/exfill are things that the V-22 are capable of but not optimized for. If I were a USN captain, I would much rather my ship have two SH-60s than one V-22.

Overall, I heavily doubt that an inch of a ship of this class will be built. Pretty much all of the roles it could function in could be done by smaller and cheaper vessels. Some of the technologies, lasers and railguns, may see implantation in the future, but it won’t be an oversized reef-builder. The next presidential administration will almost assuredly cancel the project or at the very least rename it if they are a democrat, or if they are a republican they will quietly reduce it to a smaller <20,000t cruiser with less lasers and more VLS cells. Some of these weapons may end up on actual warships, so their important to consider as the dying empire continues to lash out. The US will eventually need a larger class of ships, whether they are destroyers or cruisers, but they won’t be vanity battleships. I’m sure some contractors will become very wealthy as with any us military procurement project, it’ll just be more blatantly robbery this time.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the technical or scientific knowhow to provide an analysis on the different sensor systems, so if someone knows more, please feel free to provide input. I don’t usually write about stuff like this so if anything is wrong/worded badly please let me know and I’ll try to fix it.