Plane Sailing - Hopium & Fading Dreams of Empire

Trump wants to build a fleet of 3... 10... 20... 25 (why not 50 or 100?) new battleships for the US Navy, and although it strikes me as some sort of parody or sick joke, apparently Mango Mussolini is actually being serious.

 

Firstly, for the past decade, the US has been realizing it made a "yuge" mistake with its "littoral" combat ships and have been retiring and scrapping these "aluminum" hulled failed experiments left and right for the past few years.

 

Yes, new age weapons systems like lasers and even rail guns have become feasible and even the next big thing in naval combat tech for the present and future - but Trump and seemingly the US Navy and its naval architects seem to have completely lost sight of the advent of drone technology and its presence on the modern battlefield - sea, land and air - right now.

 

Ukraine for example, uses (and has used) water-based drones to sink Russian warships, and not just river patrol vessels, but full-size cruisers. Aerial drones pound infantry positions and even individual soldiers, destroy tanks, and strategic targets hundreds of km away in Russia.

 

And here comes Donny, announcing "the biggest ever" battleship class, bearing his tainted name no less, offering the biggest target to any third-world adversary who can afford a few choice sea drone torpedoes. Aside from the hubris involved in being an actively current president (who evaded serving in the military due to "bone spurs") naming a class of warships after himself, the tone-deafness of this undertaking is astounding.

 

If there's ever been any lessons learned from previous wars about the folly of having huge capital warships that can't defend themselves effectively against aircraft attacks, it seems the US has forgotten all of them.

 

They have names, like USS Arizona, HMS Prince of Wales, HMS Repulse, Bismarck, Yamato, Musashi, Tirpitz, Littorio, just to mention the prime examples - where a vessel that cost millions of $ to build and a thousand crew to operate was sunk by an aircraft that cost a few thousand $ and was crewed by 1 or 2. When a billion dollar battleship gets disabled by single well-placed torpedo launched from a slow antiquated aircraft that consists of essentially bits of wood, string and canvas costing maybe a few hundred dollars at the time, strategists should sit up and take notice. They did. The lessons learned at the time about the folly of sinking (no pun intended) so much money, men and materials into a single large asset that can be lost at one stroke appear to have completely evaded Trump and his brown-noses at the Pentagon - who, like Kim Jong Un's minions weighed down by 3 tons of good attendance medals each, loudly clap and bark their approval like seals even if it's probably the dumbest thing Trump has done since starting his idiotic trade wars.

 

All of that is why battleships disappeared at the end of WW2. Big guns didn't matter, because of the prime rule in gunnery - if the enemy is in range, so are you. In that case, you have lost any real advantage and your risk of loss increases tenfold. Ever since WW2, the really useful big ships were the aircraft carriers that could get their aircraft in range of the enemy without ever seeing it themselves - or getting in range of the enemy's own guns, largely keeping the important carriers safe for future use. Aircraft losses could be replaced - but a carrier loss would be catastrophic. As a bonus, carriers were better able to fight off enemy air attacks with lighter air defenses and their own aircraft - which is something a battleship was generally unable to do on its own, which is why so many warships were sunk by aircraft action during that war.

 

In the 21st century most navies have downsized not just because we aren't at war all year round, but because with the advancement of tech, we can do as much if not more, with fewer and smaller ships.

 

The US has bragged that even if one of its gigantic carriers were to be torpedoed, it wouldn't sink since they are so large, compartmentalized and so on. While it's a challenge for a submarine to penetrate the US carrier screen of escorts today, just to give you an idea, in the last decade during naval wargames, a Swedish non-nuclear submarine managed it and successfully targeted a US aircraft carrier to prove a point. To paraphrase a quote from the tired old Titanic movie: "She's made of iron, she'll sink!" These super carriers may be claimed unsinkable, but as Titanic demonstrated, they are until they aren't.

 

Back to Trump's "Trump class" battleships. What role would these monstrous follies play in the US navy? Would they form part of existing carrier escort groups, or have their own escort groups to paddle around the world intimidating small countries with oil or resources the US wants to take for itself - or like Greenland, small countries Trump wants to "annex"? With the Empire falling, it strikes me that this is just a last ditch effort to restore global military dominance. Let's not mince words. With 80-odd US military bases in countries around the world "to keep the peace", what you are is an empire. The peace in question is like the Pax Romana - Roman Peace, which essentially means peace on your terms, and nobody else's. You are in control. Except when the money and goodwill runs out - which is really where we are today. But I digress.

 

So here we have Trump wanting to build a giant floating target costing $14bn with a few lasers and likely Tomahawk missile launchers and maybe a few AA guns on it and thinking he's the bee's knees.

"We used to build a ship a week! Why can't we do that now?" He claims with astonishing bravado. Yes, a freighter a week (not warships - and certainly not battleships!) built in mass-produced sections by a multitude of wartime workers, companies and small shipyards using expertise and industries geared towards mass production on a scale unheard of before or since - all of which no longer exist.

 

Imagine that, at a time where the US economy is the most debt-ridden it has ever been in its entire, short, less than 300 year history. It is squarely in decline, only being held together by the hopium of the fading AI bubble that is reaching the very end! With an absence of the industries, facilities or expertise - or resources needed to produce the raw materials required to build such ships, especially at such a scale, I doubt even one of these fanciful fantasies will ever be built! Of course, I might be wrong - but I doubt it.

 

Either way, I'm sure this will end really well. I have popcorn handy.