Trump's battleship boondoggle
Big is less on the modern battlefield
Probably like a lot of people, I was surprised the other day to hear the president propose a new class of battleships. What surprised me is that no one’s built a battleship since World War II. The reason for that is that there’s been no need for battleships. A little more on that in a bit.
Like a lot of things Trump, the odds of a Trump-class battleship touching the seas is incredibly remote. For starters, Trump has vowed to be involved in planning the ship despite his complete lack of experience at it. The complete lack of forethought that went into turning the East Wing into a ballroom is a good guide for how it’ll probably go. Like that project, it’ll be taxpayers who get stuck with the bill long after Trump is out of the Oval Office.
Building more ships for the Navy is great. Analysts, particularly those who understand Asia, have warned that China is a serious threat to American naval dominance. It’s not just ships, it’s also our ability to move troops and equipment to what would be battlefields near China. Building ships to satisfy a blowhard’s vanity, on the other hand, is something else.
Lessons from the Black Sea
The war in Ukraine has taught us that for the time being, big is less on a modern battlefields. Drones have turned what were supposed to be kings of the battlefields—tanks—into supporting elements (the new turret toss record competition has provided entertainment since Russia invaded).
Nowhere has this been more dramatic than at sea. Ukraine, which started the war without a navy to speak of, has effectively neutralized what was once the powerful Black Sea Fleet. They’ve done this through drones, home-built anti-ship missiles and—naturally—Russian incompetence. A couple of weeks ago, Ukraine even claimed to have damaged a Russian submarine while in base with an underwater drone. They are also using drones to strike Russian assets more than 1,000 miles from Ukraine.
The fighting in Europe tells us that while there is still a place for tanks, the era of the battlefield behemoths is over. Winning the next war depends on learning lessons from current wars. If big assets are getting chewed to pieces in a current war environment, you don’t build big assets to fight the next war with answering questions.
The Navy had moved in this direction—smaller ships—by focusing on new destroyers and frigates rather than large combatants like the Ticonderoga-class cruisers. The big, beautiful battleships will cost $15. You could build a smaller ship for $2 billion. One vanity battleship for seven smaller ships. More platforms provides two advantages. You have more places to launch attacks on, which means better coverage of large spans of water. And when they enemy is successful, you have backups for lost assets.
History’s last gasp from battleships
The reason why no one has built battleships since World War II is that Pearl Harbor told us that the age of battleships was over. While there were several naval battles in Europe where battleships fought other ships of similar sizes (battlecruisers and battleships), only twice did it happen in the Pacific: when the U.S.S. Washington sank the IJS Kirishima off Guadalcanal and during the Battle of the Surigao Straits during the Leyte campaign. Most of the capital ships lost during the fighting in the Pacific were sunk either by carrier-based aircraft or submarines (or, in a few cases, both).
Before the war, there were already some naval thinkers who saw the writing on the wall. The prevailing belief at the time that big battlewagons carrying big guns would project power. This was dogma that went back decades. The Washington Treaty, signed in the early 20s, was built on it.
The United States rode to victory largely on the backs of its aircraft carriers with battleships playing a supporting role by either providing anti-aircraft cover or through shore bombardments. The battleships were too slow and didn’t have the range to engage with enemy ships the way that aircraft could.
Nothing has changed that calculus since. In fact, the lessons from Ukraine is that massed drone strikes at sea make large targets an even worse idea.
Money comes from Congress
Very little of the coverage reflects any of that, however. Most of it has fallen into the familiar trap of not providing illumination but asking questions like naval planning is like high school drama. Here is a CNN story about it that suggests that the most serious issue is whether Trump is some kind of visionary and can he pull it off.
I weep for the Republic.
One question that’s gone unanswered is how he plans to pay for it. This has been a hallmark of coverage of everything Donald Trump going back forever. He’ll make these wild promises, like tariff refunds, but no one actually asks how they plan to pull it off. In fact, no one seems to care.
The Constitution puts the question of raising and spending money squarely on the House of Representatives, however. Defense appropriations have played out the last decade follows a pattern: Navy asks for money to build ships, Congress gives the money to the Army. The assumption for a lot of years has been, “Why aggressively build new ships? Who is stupid enough to challenge us at sea?” Meanwhile, China aggressively built ships to challenge us at sea.
Will Congress plow money into battleships intended primarily to satisfy the vanity of an aging blowhard? If Trump leaves office before construction starts, will the next president continue the program or just cancel it? These are good questions. Our legacy media no longer has the capacity to ask them, however.
And a photo for no particular reason
This is about as touched-up a photo as I’ll share. Taken as-is, it was awfully grey. I added a bit of color to it.