President Donald Trump announced Monday the United States is building two battleships for its Navy, which he said will be the largest battleships “in the history of the world.”
Trump made the announcement alongside Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of the Navy John Phalen, at his luxurious Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, noting the ships will be part of the forthcoming “Golden Fleet.”
“As commander-in-chief, it’s my great honor to announce that I have approved a plan for the Navy to begin the construction of two brand new, very large–the largest we’ve ever built–battleships,” Trump said.
The last U.S. battleship to complete initial construction was the Iowa-class USS Missouri in 1944, which was decommissioned in 1992.
“We had big battleships. These are bigger… They’ll be 100 times the force, the power, and there’s never been anything like these ships,” he added. “These have been under design consideration for a long time, and it started with me in my first term.”
A rendering of a ship on display during the announcement featured the name “USS Defiant.”
Trump said the forthcoming ships will be “100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.”
Trump stated that the ships will be armed with the “highest level” guns and missiles, and will feature “many hypersonic weapons, state-of-the-art electric rail guns, and even the high-powered lasers that you’ve been starting to read about.”
“They’ll also carry the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles currently under development, which will be instituted pretty quickly, but they’re under development, and they’ve proven to be extremely lethal,” he added.
Trump noted that the Navy, along with himself, will take the lead on the design, emphasizing he is “a very aesthetic person.”
Per the president, the campaign to build new battleships will begin with the two he announced Monday and continue with eight more. The ships will be built in the United States, he told reporters.
“Then we’re going to ultimately, and pretty quickly, have a total of about 20 to 25, we’ll make that determination,” he noted.
“We envision that these ships will be the first of a whole new class of battleships to be produced in the years to come,” the president continued.
“From Theodore Roosevelt, the great white fleet…to the legendary USS Missouri, whose massive guns helped win World War II, America’s battleships have always been unmistakable symbols of national power,” he said.
Read the full article here