Bringing Back the Battleship? - Railguns, US Shipbuilding and a 35,000 ton bad idea?

Episode Overview

• The podcast analyzes the surprise announcement of a new "Trump Class" of US Navy battleship, placing it in the context of historical naval warfare and current US shipbuilding challenges.
• It introduces the concept that modern naval combat power is primarily measured by missile capacity (Vertical Launch System cells), not the size or armor of a ship.
• The episode critically evaluates the proposed battleship as an inefficient and high-risk investment, offering a poor return in firepower for its immense cost, tonnage, and crew requirements.
• It reveals the most significant aspect of the plan: the new battleship is not an addition to the fleet but a direct replacement for the planned and necessary next-generation destroyer, the DDG(X).
• This decision is framed as a "force design car crash" that exacerbates a looming capability gap with rival navies and represents a massive opportunity cost for the US Navy's future.

Key Concepts

• Historical Battleship Context: The evolution from "all-big-gun" dreadnoughts to their obsolescence due to aircraft carriers and missiles. Their retirement was driven by vulnerability and immense operational costs, particularly large crew requirements.
• US Shipbuilding Struggles: The US Navy's recent procurement difficulties, exemplified by the troubled Constellation-class frigate program, create a challenging environment for introducing a radically new and complex ship class.
• The "Trump Class" / USS Defiant: A conceptual proposal for a massive, 35,000-ton battleship packed with immature and unproven technologies like railguns and advanced lasers, for which there is no formal, funded program.
• VLS Cells as the Key Metric: In modern naval warfare, the primary measure of a warship's capability is its missile capacity via its Vertical Launch System (VLS). Missiles serve as a ship's main offensive, defensive, and mission-enabling tool.
• Distributed Lethality: A naval strategy focused on increasing fleet survivability and complicating enemy targeting by spreading firepower (VLS cells) across numerous platforms, including smaller manned and unmanned vessels.
• The DDG(X) Replacement: The crucial insight that the new battleship program is not an addition to the fleet but is intended to cancel and replace the planned next-generation destroyer program (DDG(X)), which was designed to succeed the Arleigh Burke class.
• Force Design & Opportunity Cost: The battleship decision is presented as a "force design car crash" that worsens a known future capability gap with the Chinese Navy. The immense budget required for the battleship comes at the expense of potentially building more destroyers, submarines, or other critical assets.

Quotes

• At 0:32 - "Probably less common on everyone's bingo cards was the announcement of a new class of railgun-toting battleship." - The speaker expresses surprise at the US Navy's decision to pursue a new battleship class.
• At 1:18 - "...if your shipyards are already struggling to turn out enough basic destroyers... the clear answer is to ask them to start turning out 35,000-ton super combatants packed with technology that, strictly speaking, doesn't exist yet." - A sarcastic critique of the logic behind pursuing a highly complex ship design given current industrial challenges.
• At 7:19 - "The simple answer is that the aircraft carrier became the new de facto capital ship of choice, and there was no place in the new air-power-driven order for the old battleships." - Summarizing the primary reason for the historical decline of the battleship.
• At 8:15 - "And as is so often the case, this was also just about economics and trade-offs." - Emphasizing that high operational costs, not just technological obsolescence, led to the retirement of battleships.
• At 11:40 - "A major piece of evidence here is that in budgetary terms, the Defiant appears to have basically come out of nowhere." - Highlighting that there is no formal, funded program for the new battleship, reinforcing its conceptual status.
• At 28:52 - "For a lot of warships, your missiles are your offensive option, your defensive option, and your mission all rolled into one." - Explaining why VLS cell count is the primary metric of a modern warship's capability.
• At 30:34 - "A navy is probably going to want to have as many missiles and as many launch cells as possible. And because resources are inherently limited, it's going to want to field those missiles and cells as efficiently as possible." - Articulating the fundamental tension between maximizing firepower and finite budgets in naval procurement.
• At 33:56 - "A single Defiant or a pair of next-gen destroyers have the same number of VLS cells: 128." - A direct comparison highlighting the poor firepower density of the proposed battleship design.
• At 37:46 - "The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X)." - Revealing the crucial context that the battleship is a substitute for, not an addition to, the Navy's future fleet plans.
• At 43:41 - "Kind of like a force design car crash playing out in slow motion...decision-makers have clearly been aware that they're about to run into a wall and have sequentially, apparently been able to do nothing about it besides repeatedly making the situation worse." - Describing the ongoing crisis in US Navy fleet planning.
• At 47:06 - "A fairer comparison, if you can find the money to build the battleships instead, would be to compare them not against the base case scenario where you're just building DDG(X)s, but what you could do if you use that money on something else instead." - Framing the core economic argument against the battleship in terms of opportunity cost.

Takeaways

• Evaluate naval power by a warship's missile capacity (VLS cells) and its cost-efficiency, not by traditional metrics like size or tonnage.
• Spreading firepower across many smaller platforms ("Distributed Lethality") is a more resilient and flexible strategy than concentrating it in a few large, high-value targets.
• Major defense procurement decisions involve immense opportunity costs; funding one "super-ship" means defunding a potentially larger number of more versatile platforms.
• Prioritizing technologically immature "super-weapons" is a high-risk gamble, especially when an industrial base is already struggling to produce existing, proven designs.
• Historical military platforms were often retired for economic and manning reasons, not just technological ones—a lesson relevant to today's high-cost, high-tech systems.
• Controversial procurement choices, like replacing a practical destroyer with a conceptual battleship, risk widening a critical capability gap with strategic competitors.