Key Points

Trump’s battleship plan clashes with decades of U.S. naval strategy and technology shifts

Experts described it as a “prestige project,” a “bomb magnet” and said that “this ship will never sail.”

Even if it were technically feasible, the cost of building the battleship would be prohibitive.

  • Furbag@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    The very first thought that popped into my head when I heard about this was that Trump is so stupid he doesn’t even realize that we haven’t actively used battleships in our naval doctrine since the end of World War 2. Aircraft carriers will always be more versatile, have longer range, and cast a larger sphere of influence than a battleship of any size ever will.

    So this is little more than a glorified pet project to stroke Trump’s fragile ego, set to the tune of multiple billions of dollars in R&D and private contracts to his wealthy friends, for a project that will unlikely be done before he leaves office or leaves this mortal coil, whichever comes first.

    I expect that if we end this madness and get a Democrat in office, if they have any good sense at all, they’ll cancel the project. However, the damage will be done between now and the next three years. Taxpayer money will be shoveled into this pit and evaporate into the ether.

    • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
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      18 hours ago

      I’ll be honest, I doubt any real money is being dumped into this.

      More and more, things like this come across as people giving Trump nonsense toys to play with to feel bigly important and distract him as he gets more and more infirm. If any money actually moves towards this, it’ll be actually diverting into someone’s pocket along the way.

      It struck me the most when he made the announcement of a new class of Jumbo Jet and he was literally sitting there at his desk like a kid playing with a lego airplane model.

      He is increasingly a addled child that they keep distracted with stupid shit like this so that they can get work done without him fucking it up for them by opening his idiot mouth. (like admitting that Venuzuela was about oil…for example)