President Donald Trump’s announcement of a new Trump-class guided missile battleship makes clear that he intends to strengthen America’s military power, whatever one thinks of the name.
The battleships will, however, take a great deal of money and dockyard space that could be better spent on other warships suited to countering China. The key measure of naval combat power is not whether a warship is big and awesome-looking. Rather, it is whether a warship provides maximal bang-for-buck military capability. In 2025, and for at least the next 25 years, military potential must be defined as “highly effective for major combat operations against China.”
Trump’s defense department admits as much, with War Secretary Pete Hegseth noting that China is the Pentagon’s “sole pacing challenge.” This assessment reflects China’s development of its military into a potent force in all areas of warfighting. China’s ground, naval, air, and space-based power is designed with an overriding purpose to conquer the island democracy of Taiwan and to defeat any American attempt to intervene to stop it.
To that end, China now possesses the world’s largest navy, a vast land-attack and anti-ship ballistic missile force, a massive air force of both older fighters and sixth-generation stealth aircraft, and plans to build a constellation of thousands of satellite and anti-satellite systems in space. Many of these forces are impressive, including China’s Type-055 air defense cruiser and its Dongfeng carrier-killer ballistic missiles.
To counter these, the United States needs more warships, missiles, and aircraft able to fight tough and lasting battles in the waters around Taiwan. That means fighting very close to the Chinese mainland. Unfortunately, Trump-class battleships are unlikely to be able to do that.
Victory against China requires more than the ability to smash Chinese military ships and aircraft. It also means surviving Chinese military attacks. Surviving means being able to deal with dozens of Chinese satellites targeting our ships and each guiding a salvo of independently operated ballistic missiles. Surviving means fending off dozens of Chinese military aircraft firing their weapons quickly and returning to nearby Chinese mainland air bases to rearm, refuel, and return in a second wave. U.S. ships must be able to survive without much support. After all, geography matters greatly when it comes to Taiwan. In such a war, U.S. warships and combat aircraft will be significantly fewer in number than those of the enemy, and their bases will be much farther away than those of their Chinese counterparts.
When it comes to fighting China, big size is likely to pose more problems than advantages. Trump-class battleships will be the largest surface combatants since World War II, so they will make for easier physical targets. And because of their heavy armaments and prestige, they would also be prioritized by the Chinese military. Then there’s the question of opportunity cost.
The U.S. Navy’s ship construction program is woefully behind schedule. The Navy’s Sea Systems Command has presided over a decade of vast cost overruns and rising delays to important projects such as its new Ford-class aircraft carriers and the Virginia-class attack submarines. Indeed, the Navy just canceled a new class of frigate it had spent years demanding constant design changes for. Trump-class battleships will exacerbate these problems. Not only will a new design be required, but new funds will also have to be allocated and shipyards found to build these behemoths. Will other, proven warships such as the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers be sacrificed to make room? If so, China’s growing overmatch of the U.S. Navy is going to get worse for us, not better.
The better course would be to stand firm on Indo-Pacific Commander Sam Paparo’s plan to deploy thousands of unmanned drone ships and phantom ships that can boost U.S. combat power, trick the Chinese military’s sensors, and waste its munitions. It also means getting more destroyers and attack submarines out of the shipyards and deployed faster.
SUBSIDIZING DEMAND WON’T SOLVE AFFORDABILITY
Adequate preparation for war with China requires the Navy to show more courage and ingenuity in proposing fresh or previously sidelined ideas to Congress. Our naval mismatch against China demands that we get close allies, such as the South Koreans, who have a superb record of producing excellent warships on time and at the right price, to build our warships. We should also copy the Chinese tactic, disclosed only this week, of placing missile and radar systems on cargo ships or ships in the ready reserve fleet. That offers a path to boosting combat potency without relying only on more hulls.
Trump rightly wants to restore the deterrence that once went with grand battleships cruising out of dockyards. But those days are gone. Today, bigger isn’t better. Today, more numbers of smaller, survivable, and more heavily armed warships are crucial to maritime power.
