U.S. to subject new ‘Trump class’ warships as army stress marketing campaign round Venezuela ramps up
Donald Trump announced plans on Monday for the U.S. Navy to construct a new class of warships that will be some of the largest vessels of its type the service has fielded.
The battleships, which are part of an effort to develop a new “Golden Fleet” will be “100 times more powerful than any battleships ever built,” declared Trump.
Details first learned by The Wall Street Journal indicate the ships will replace the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and cost around $5bn each.
The ships will be 30,000-40,000 tons, according to the president, and will carry the capacity for hosting futuristic technology like directed energy lasers and railguns, a U.S. official claimed to the Journal. The newspaper reported that the new fleet, which will also include new frigates announced by the service last week, was the product of the work of a joint Navy-White House team with the aim of countering China’s influence. Trump, on Monday, denied that was the fleet’s specific aim, claiming instead that it would counter “everybody” and talking up his administration’s relationshiop with Beijing.
The president spoke from Palm Beach, Florida, where he is staying for the Christmas holiday into the new year. Signs next to the president depicted artistic renderings of the first ship of the new line, the “Trump-class USS Defiant.”
“As commander-in-chief, it is my great honor to announce that I have approved a plan for the Navy to begin the construction of two brand new, very large, largest we’ve ever built, battleships,” the president announced.
“There’s never been anything like these ships,” Trump said. “These have been under design consideration for a long time. And it started with me in my first term, because I said, ‘Why aren’t we doing battleships like we used to?’”
“We used to build a ship a day, during World War 2. And now we don’t really do ships anymore,” the president complained on Monday before praising his first administration on the issue of constructing and revolutionizing the Navy’s submarines. During his first term, U.S. naval shipbuilding missed targets set by the Obama administration.
He was flanked by top Cabinet officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who
The Navy secretary, John Phelan, claimed that the Trump administration would “make battleships great again” and would build the “best-looking” ships on the planet.
Source: independent.co.uk
