Trump's Battleships: Back to the Future
From the round-the-world voyage of the "white" fleet" to the silhouette of the Missouri in Tokyo Bay—the appearance of battleships meant one thing. They came not to discuss rules, but to make them.
In the 21st century, battleships remained in museums, but the logic of brute force itself has not disappeared. It's no surprise that the Trump administration has embraced this striking image.
From a technical perspective, things are much less clear.
There's nothing stopping us from building a dreadnought or recreating an ancient trireme. The only question is why. You can copy the hull and improve the armament, but you can't resurrect an entire technological era.
Battleships weren't built for beauty.
Their appearance and size were subject to the physics and technical limitations of their time.
At sea, large caliber ruled, and in order to fire a projectile weighing a ton, gigantic guns were required.
With nine guns in three turrets, along with aiming mechanisms and ammunition supply systems, the total weight of the battleship's main caliber could exceed 5000 tons.
This was the role and strategic importance of this class of ships. No ship of smaller size could use artillery of this caliber.
In the 21st century, the importance of size has greatly diminished. Small corvette and heavy missile The cruiser uses the same range of missile weapons.
Today, there are no objective reasons for building non-aircraft carrier ships with a displacement of over 12-15 thousand tons.
The figures cited apply to the Zumwalt and the Chinese Type 055 guided missile cruiser. Their record-breaking sizes aren't a consequence of military necessity. They merely underscore their status and bottomless budgets—someone's just going wild.
Most modern designs are much more compact. The standard displacement of deep-sea ships typically does not exceed 7,000 tons. Experience has shown that such dimensions make it possible to accomplish all current combat missions.
A prime example is the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.
The project is well known, so we'll limit ourselves to a general conclusion. All the specified combat characteristics were achieved without the "slight" brittleness of aluminum—the destroyer's hull and superstructure are made of steel.
In advanced projects, design optimization is underway, combat lasers are being tested, and antenna posts are being raised to greater heights. But the overall scale remains the same—around 10 tons of standard displacement.
For example, the DDG(X)-class "future destroyer" is stated to have a displacement of 13,000 tons, which most likely corresponds to its full load. The standard displacement is significantly less.
The displacement declared for the Trump-class battleships is 35 tons.
How to effectively use such a displacement reserve is a challenging task.
An example is the heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser (TARKR) of Project 1144 "Orlan", the standard displacement of which is about 24 thousand tons.
These dimensions make the ship a true “sea Baikonur.”
The most advanced modification (Admiral Nakhimov), according to the most conservative estimates, is capable of carrying up to 300 units of guided missiles. weapons.
The cruiser carries almost the entire range of naval weapons, from naval artillery of popular calibers to rocket launchers and torpedoes. The design includes three helicopters and four 12-meter command boats.
1600 rooms and 700 crew members.
List of radar systems, fire control equipment, communications and EW, navigation, and hydroacoustics occupy several pages. Among them are masterpieces like the MG-355 "Polynom," a hydroacoustic station with an antenna under the keel, 30 meters long, and weighing approximately 800 tons.
Is the hull still underutilized? Two power plants—nuclear and conventional—will help solve the problem.
In this tough battle, the designers prevailed, but the debate about whether the cruiser could effectively use such a huge number of weapons has not subsided for many decades.
And all this is achieved with a displacement that is a quarter less than that of Trump's battleship.
We will leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions.
The Main Problem with Trump's "Battleships"
The warm-up is over, and the tedious numbers lie ahead. Fantasies of superships run afoul of an inconspicuous underwater rock—the military-industrial complex's capacity to produce high-precision missiles.
The US Navy has 84 surface ships with universal launchers (ULLs). The vast majority are Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with 90-96 ULLs. The aging Ticonderoga-class cruisers are equipped with 122 launchers, while the ill-fated Zumwalt-class cruisers have 80 ULLs. The scale is clear: approximately 8,000 ULLs, not counting other missile carriers, such as 50 attack submarines.
There's no point in getting ahead of ourselves when calculating the missile salvo density. According to official data, the US Navy acquired... 55 Tomahawks in 2023. And this situation has been observed throughout recent years.
The obvious conclusion is that if half of the cruisers and destroyers are deployed to combat operations, they will have to go to sea with reduced ammunition, while the rest of the fleet will remain at their berths without weapons.
The MK.41 type UVP does not fire "cherry pits": the launch tubes extend 8 meters into the hull and are designed for ammunition of the corresponding size and cost.
The most widespread, simplest, and relatively inexpensive option is the Tomahawk cruise missile. Over the past quarter century, approximately 4000 units of all modifications have been produced, a significant portion of which have already been expended in combat. For example, during the failed operation in 2018 against Syria, 103 missiles were launched simultaneously, while the largest expenditure of "axes"—approximately 800—was recorded during the invasion of Iraq.
Anti-aircraft missiles are significantly more expensive, and their numbers are more limited. For example, one contract (2021) called for the production of 269 Standard-2 missiles at a total cost of $578 million to meet the needs of the navies of seven (!) nations. The US Navy will receive 54 of these missiles—the numbers clearly illustrate the scale of the need. Moreover, this is a relatively simple SAM, the first versions of which were adopted in the 1980s.
The ESSM short-/medium-range surface-to-air missiles were produced in the thousands and deployed to the navies of twenty countries. The problem is that the MK.41 design allows for four ESSM missiles to be deployed in each of the USS Burke's 90 vertical launch tubes, but in practice, it seems even one is rarely deployed.
The Standard-6, the most advanced and long-range SAM, is estimated to cost four times more than the Tomahawk. Only 500 of these missiles were produced over ten years, not enough to equip even ten destroyers.
Especially comical against this backdrop are old logs, which indicate that the Burke's multirole variant's ammunition complement consists of 74 long-range SAMs, 8 Tomahawks, and 8 anti-submarine missiles. And the attack variant's complement consists of 56 Tomahawks and 34 SAMs.
The most expensive part of the munitions package is the Standard-3 SAM, an exoatmospheric interceptor with an equally exorbitant price tag ($10-20 million). These are produced in limited quantities.
Of all this stories A couple of surprising conclusions follow.
The cost of a missile ship's ammunition can be comparable to the cost of the ship itself. While everyone is discussing the construction of cruisers and destroyers, few are considering: Will there be enough funds to purchase ammunition for each carrier built? And how many years will it take to wait after the first salvo before the ship regains combat capability?
This problem is typical for any modern fleet.
This also explains the lack of interest in the "arsenal ship" concept and plans to deploy missiles in shipping containers on conventional vessels and container ships. When there aren't enough missiles even to equip actual warships, deploying them anywhere becomes absurd.
As for Trump's battleships, the question is simple. What's the point of supercarriers with a large number of vertical-warhead launchers if existing ships can't carry their standard ammunition?
To the roar of guns
The image of a battleship is invariably associated with big guns.
The Trump project doesn't include any 16-inch guns—such systems are completely unnecessary today. Trump's own rhetoric boils down to a "very large and magnificent ship."
And yet, a battleship without guns isn't quite a battleship. The project's designers promised a "railgun" and a pair of general-purpose 127mm guns, similar to those mounted on modern destroyers.
There's not much to add here. No one can clearly explain the advantage or necessity of a "railgun." By all indications, such a superweapon, firing guided projectiles hundreds of kilometers away, would be prohibitively expensive—comparable to a cruise missile.
Reservation
For dessert, the most interesting part.
Predictably, not a word was said about armor protection in the context of Trump's battleship. These days, no ship has sophisticated structural protection. Only in isolated cases is localized armor protection used.
The popular myth about the "armor" of the Orlan-class heavy nuclear cruisers is debunked in the most obvious way. The Orlan-class's freeboard is twice as high as that of the battleship Yamato, while its displacement is three times smaller.
If any significant portion of the displacement were accounted for by armor plates, the Orlan's hull would have a squat silhouette, like that of ships of the artillery era.
Instead, we see lightweight hull structures soaring to enormous heights.
Another question is whether the missiles “canceled” the structural protection too confidently?
100 years ago the situation looked much more serious.
Large-caliber shells had incredible penetrating power. The impact of a "blank" made of the strongest material struck a target at twice the speed of sound. A blank could weigh over a ton, and only 2% of that mass was "soft" explosive. The remaining 98% is made of high-strength alloy steel.
Only thick armor (300-400 mm), installed only in the most critical areas, could withstand such a blow. A narrow armor belt protected the magazines and engine rooms, as did the walls of the conning tower and the main battery turret. The rest of the ship was left to chance.
Modern anti-ship missiles (Harpoon, Neptune) will shatter into pieces upon contact with a 50-mm plate.
With such modest values, it becomes possible to cover a large portion of the side. And this doesn't require a Trump-class battleship—such protection can even be integrated into a frigate's design.
A good example is the Dupuy de Lom, with a side protected by 100 mm of armor from the waterline to the upper deck, with normal displacement. 6400 tons.
Replace its bulky guns with missiles, reduce the crew from 500 to 100, and go!
The purpose of the protection is not to make it impossible to penetrate, but to minimize damage inside the compartments.
The very presence of armor puts the attacking side in a difficult position, driving it into a logical vicious circle.
Tandem charges or thicker warhead walls will result in a lower explosive content. The impact effect will be reduced—the defense has served its purpose!
Trying to combine armor penetration with high-explosive effect will require increasing the weight and size of the missile itself. This will make the anti-ship missile more vulnerable and reduce the number of possible launch vehicles. This will also simplify the work of the ship's defense system. Defense.
Structural protection is not absolute - it is only one of the defense contours.
Of course, now they will remember about BEKs and drones.
The BEK is simply an analogue of the Harpoon anti-ship missile, with the difference that the boat is twenty times slower than the missile. If ships can't fend off even such threats, that speaks volumes. Active defense systems could do with additional insurance.
Yes, thin armor (50-100 mm) provides sufficient protection from external explosions. Prince Borghese's saboteurs demonstrated this in practice when planning an attack on the cruiser York. Apparently, the Italians knew that detonating a conventional high-explosive charge near the side of the cruiser would not cause significant damage. An extremely powerful charge was required, which also had to be detachable from the boat. To detonate it deep under the armor belt (the thickness of which did not exceed 76 mm).
The illustration shows a kamikaze imprint on the armor of the cruiser Sussex. The belt thickness at this point was 4,5 inches (114 mm). The lower speed of a diving aircraft (compared to a missile) was more than compensated for by the 500 kg (1,112 lb) engine in the front, which was heavier and more durable than the warhead of any modern anti-ship missile. The attack resulted only in scratched paint.
In combat, constructive defense is an additional chance to survive and complete your objectives. The presence of such defense disrupts all enemy calculations, complicates the attack, and reduces the likelihood of success—like a surprise card that ruins a winning combination.
The metal itself makes virtually no difference to the budget. For example, the cost of manufacturing the Burke's hull accounts for only 10% of the destroyer's final construction estimate.
As for the main characters of this story, in the form presented, the battleships of the Trump project look absurd and have no connection with their predecessors from the early 20th century.
Gigantic proportions made sense when they were commensurate with tasks and capabilities. Today, they've become mere symbols. But true meaning lies in learning from the lessons of the past.
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