President Donald Trump on Monday announced a plan to build a new, large warship that he is calling a “battleship” as part of a larger vision to create a “Golden Fleet.”
And Bath Iron Works wasted no time offering to build it.
The General Dynamics-owned shipyard in Maine’s midcoast “stands ready to fully support the Navy in the design and construction of this important new shipbuilding program,” BIW President Charles F. Krugh, president said in a statement Monday afternoon.
“America’s warfighters deserve the most advanced, lethal and survivable combat ships we can deliver to protect our country and our families,” Krugh said.
BIW has been one of the major shipbuilders for the Navy for more than 140 years, and Krugh said it has the “capacity, capability and engineering expertise” for the job.
What exactly that job will be remains to be seen.
Trump claimed during the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday that the new fleet will “be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.”
The battleship, according to Trump, will be longer and larger than the World War II-era Iowa-class battleships and will be armed with hypersonic missiles, rail guns, and high-powered lasers — all technologies that are still being developed by the Navy.
A poster displayed at the announcement showed an illustration of a warship overlaid with the words “Trump Class, USS Defiant.”
Just a month ago, the Navy scrapped its plans to build a new, small warship, citing growing delays and cost overruns, deciding instead to go with a modified version of a Coast Guard cutter that was being produced until recently. The sea service has also failed to build its other newly designed ships, like the new Ford-class aircraft carrier and Columbia-class submarines, on time and on budget.
Historically, the term battleship has referred to a specific type of ship — a large, heavily armored vessel armed with massive guns designed to bombard other ships or targets ashore. This type of ship was at the height of prominence during World War II, and the largest of the U.S. battleships, the Iowa-class, were roughly 60,000 tons.
After World War II, the battleship’s role in modern fleets diminished rapidly in favor of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles. The U.S. Navy did modernize four Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s by adding cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, along with modern radars, but by the 1990s all four were decommissioned.
Trump has long held strong opinions on specific aspects of the Navy’s fleet, sometimes with a view toward keeping older technology instead of modernizing.
During his first term, he unsuccessfully called for the return to steam-powered catapults to launch jets from the Navy’s newest aircraft carriers instead of the more modern electromagnetic system.
He has also complained about the look of the Navy’s destroyers and decried Navy ships being covered in rust.
He said Monday he will have a direct role in designing the new warship.
“The U.S. Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person,” Trump said.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.