Why bigger isn’t better for Trump’s ‘Golden Fleet’ of battleships

Last week President Donald Trump, with his customary fanfare, unveiled plans for a new “Golden Fleet” of Trump-class battleships.

“There’s never been anything like these ships,” the president declared as he showed off renderings of the USS Defiant, the first US Navy battleship to be built since the USS Missouri in 1944.

But while the new battleships look awesome on paper, they may be exactly the wrong choice for modern naval warfare.

The 840-foot Trump-class battleships will be around three times the size of the current Zumwalt class, the Navy’s most advanced surface combat vessel.

The Defiant’s arsenal will include 12 hypersonic cruise missile cells as well as 128 cells for other missiles — a mix of anti-ship, land-attack, anti-aircraft and interceptor types.

An electromagnetic railgun will fire projectiles to extreme range for shore bombardment, and the defensive array includes multiple lasers and small guns for protection against missiles and drones.

Yet there’s good reason why the Defiant, when it’s laid down in 2030, will be the first new American battleship in more than 80 years: Battleships bowed out in WWII with the sinking of Japan’s Yamato, the biggest and most powerful ever built.

By 1945 it was already obvious that air power had outclassed and outranged these ships’ big guns, but in a last desperate gamble Japan threw the Yamato forward against the US Navy.

Its anti-aircraft guns were no match for hundreds of carrier-borne US aircraft, which systematically bombed and torpedoed the ship until it capsized and exploded with the loss of 3,000 sailors.

Since then, smaller, specialized warships, fitted for tasks like anti-submarine warfare or air defense, have allowed admirals to pick and mix the group for a particular mission.

These ships are still expensive, though, with the workhorse Arleigh Burke class costing $2 billion each.

Lately the Navy has been moving toward a distributed operations model, networking a large number of vessels and aircraft together and mixing “sensors” to locate the enemy and “shooters” to direct fire at them.

Commanders are supplementing crewed vessels with small uncrewed ones, right down to surfboard-sized Saildrones able to stay at sea for months on end.

Trump’s proposed battleships reverse this approach.

If they go forward, enemy forces won’t face a large number of US threats over a wide area, but a handful of large targets, valued at perhaps $15 billion each.

A Trump-class ship will concentrate combat power in one spot, potentially vulnerable to destruction by a small number of missiles.

China in particular has introduced new “carrier killer” ballistic missiles, developed to knock out giant, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers — but equally effective against battleships.

Meanwhile in the Black Sea, the Russian fleet has been effectively defeated by Ukraine, an enemy that lacks a navy.

Russia’s warships have been harassed and sunk by a combination of Ukrainian robot speedboats carrying out kamikaze attacks and long-range missiles fired from land.

In December, a Russian submarine was disabled in port by a squadron of robot attack subs, while a Russian tanker was forced out of action by quadcopter bombers flying from nearby.

The onslaught has forced the Russians to keep their ships hidden in ports behind protective booms and nets.

Enthusiasts will argue that the Trump-class ships’ array of new defensive measures will protect them from ballistic and hypersonic missiles, even while fending off swarms of drones.

This requires a leap of faith in unproven technology — and a willingness to put a lot of eggs in a multibillion-dollar basket.

Meanwhile, China is not building battleships.

Shortly after Trump announced the new battleship class, leaked imagery revealed how China had converted a commercial container ship into a warship.

The refit included radar systems mounted on shipping containers, as well as stacked shipping containers on the deck transformed into vertical launch cells for missiles.

The ship has as much firepower as a destroyer; two of them could trade shot-for-shot with a Trump-class battleship.

The images implied that China could turn its vast surface fleet into an unstoppable armada, with existing warships to provide advanced sensing and command and control, and refitted container ships to bring a deep magazine of missiles capable of sweeping opposition aside.

“Bigger is better” is a mantra in the real-estate business: A skyscraper or casino has to look impressive, and Trump has plenty of experience with that.

He’s said that as “a very aesthetic person” he will help lead the battleship design process, having decried “terrible looking” designs like that of the canceled Constellation-class destroyer.

But in warfare, performance counts more than looks — and while armadas of tiny robot boats or modified merchant ships appear modest, they give plenty of bang for your buck.

Future vessels need to be based firmly on the demands of the 21st century, and $15 billion would buy a whole lot of small uncrewed vessels.

Such a fleet won’t match a Golden Fleet of big, beautiful battleships for looks. But it could win wars.

David Hambling is the author of “Swarm Troopers: How Small Drones Will Conquer the World.”