WSJ: New class of “battleship” to be named after you know who.

Hahaha. Trump manages to top this posting from yesterday – “7 Other Things Trump Is Naming After Himself “

The new vessels, which the president calls battleships, will be latest in what the White House envisions as a ‘Golden Fleet’

“We’re desperately in need of ships,” Trump said. “Some of them have gotten old and tired and obsolete and we’re going to go the exact opposite direction.”

Trump said the new battleships will be “100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built” and would be faster than existing ships. The Navy could buy 20 to 25 of the new ships, he said.

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Trump made the announcement alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan.

The ship draws on work already done by the Navy and ship makers to build a new destroyer, which is in the early stages of development, according to an industry official.

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Over the past few months, a Navy team developed and approved requirements for the new class of “large surface combatant,” according to a U.S. official. The new ship will weigh 30,000 tons to 40,000 tons, Trump said, larger than current destroyers. He said the ships would carry nuclear cruise missiles. The ships will have the ability to add future weapons such as rail guns and directed energy, according to one of the people familiar with the discussions.

A White House and Navy team earlier this year began planning for a new fleet that will be better suited to counter China, manage the Western Hemisphere and deal with other threats, the Journal earlier reported. The Navy proposed the name “Golden Fleet,” following other similarly branded Trump-era initiatives such as the Golden Dome missile defense system he ordered the military to build soon after returning to office. 

The Golden Fleet will comprise a number of large warships outfitted with more powerful long-range missiles, even potentially hypersonic missiles, along with a larger number of a the smaller frigates. The new frigate will be based on the Coast Guard’s Legend-class National Security Cutter, which HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding division builds in Pascagoula, Miss., and will replace the Constellation-class frigate that the Navy canceled last month after years of delays.