I wonder how far a laser beam can be shot and still be effective. Say four or five miles on a ocean then the curvature of the Earth becomes a factor. Plus if it's lethality is decreased by the atmosphere, what kind of punch does a laser beam have at say twenty or forty miles? Is it a good weapon for a ship?
Depends on how rapid the energy created to fire the weapon can be generated. Hence my desire for the fusion reactors if coupled with the right capacitors I would say horizon to horizon lethal with a minimal delay for rapid fire ability. Up to 24 miles in a 360.
Plus from the Q posts we know that we were given bad steel for some ships, all thanks to Hillary and Obama, so we definitely need to revamp some of our boats
Thank you for this bit of information. If President Trump wants a 40K ton battleship it would be half the displacement of the Iowa class battleships. So in essence a Navy Cruiser.
They’ll be between 30-40,000 tons in displacement.
It’ll be a beast of ship. The Current Heaviest Surface Combatant Vessel in service with any nation is the Russian Kirov-Class Battlecruisers. They max out at 28,000 tons displacement with a full combat load out.
Supposing they hit the upper limit of its projected weight. At 40,000 tons It’ll be Heavier than any class of Battleship that has entered service with the U.S Navy outside the South Dakota and Iowa Class Battleships.
Even if you low ball it at 30,000 tons. It’ll be the most heavily armed and armored son of a bitch currently on the Ocean.
And they’re already working on a replacement for the Ford Class Carriers. Wonder what kind of behemoths that’ll produce
Nuclear yes! We certainly do need to catch up. There was once a nuclear reactor at the main US research base at McMurdo Station. Reportedly it was decommissioned in 1972. I was there in 74' & 75'.
Yes the ole' Big Red - USCGC Glacier. The Glacier was scrapped during the Obama years. The Glacier Society petitioned our government to save the ship to be used as a museum for polar exploration. It was the most powerful icebreaker in the US fleet at the time.
The Army needs to get lighter, faster and get off the damn roads (said with emphasis). Nobody will say it if they realize it, that major ground war for us is a thing of the past.
Are you saying the Army needs to go airborne or off road? Todays tanks have the same problems as tanks from decades ago, you get them off road then they sink up to their turrets in muddy fields.
Off road. But all of the armored vehicles have a real sinking problem. I am not sure on the Stryker. I competed for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle but I lost the builder two days before the proposal was due. I could have traversed any terrain, including water. But what they bought will sink up to its axles on anything other than hard terrain. I was anticipating mountains and rice paddies. And mine made the helicopter weight limit.
A Battleship as in BB battleship? HOLY SHIT!
I wonder if it'll have large guns or just settle with 155mm guns from other concepts...
I doubt we'll see 8 inch or 16 inch... but that'd be the dream...
Lasers are mostly for close in, shooting down missiles, drones and some aircraft.
TDLR: We shouldn't be building this stuff. Go ahead and downvote this. Mods, you do you.
But why are we doing this? Why are we cheering this?
What is the purpose of a navy? To defend our coastal waters, to defend our trade routes, to impose our will militarily from the seas. Sailors, if your Naval Academy days tell you to correct this, have at it. Our coasts are well defended with the current fleets. That's true both in the Atlantic and the Pacific. In fact, we're more than adequately equipped to control the waters of both N. and S. America.
Achievement Unlocked! Monroe Doctrine: Naval :check:
Can we defend our trade routes? Sure. That's what the 11 aircraft carriers we have do. We patrol the Panama Canal, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Malacca. The world's trillions of dollars of maritime trade are all protected at enormous expense by the US Navy. We saw that when the Yemenis got frisky and started shooting. No one else had anything meaningful to contribute. It was the US Navy that did the work defending the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. About the only thing we really don't do is control the Arctic and that's because nothing goes there except Russian icebreakers. Fine. Let them have that.
Can we impose our will from the seas? Yes. We have 11 aircraft carriers. If we want to put ordnance on a target anywhere on the planet, we can do it. We park a carrier offshore, and it's a floating airbase. We use them to threaten other countries all the time. Even with regular rotations for maintenance, we maintain this capability all over the world.
Achievement Unlocked! Gunboat Diplomacy :check:
But here's the catch.
High-speed, high-accuracy missiles negate the surface fleet. We've watched this in Ukraine. Cheap, unmanned drones and precision-guide anti-ship missiles cut Russia's Black Sea fleet to shreds. Russia has pulled it all back to the Russian coast because the Ukies keep blowing holes in these very expensive ships with explosives they taped to dinghies patched up with Flexseal. ANYONE can do this. The Yemenis were launching cheap homemade rockets at our carrier battle group. We sent billions to clear that Strait out. They spent a few yuan on Chinese parts. Well, Iran spent it, but you get the point. We don't win that battle in the long run - and we certainly don't win it against China or Russia.
We don't build battleships anymore. Air power negated them in WW2. They were relics of the Age of Sail when you put cannons on a boat in order to bombard fixed positions. For the last 80 years, we used planes to do that. Now we use precision-guided missiles and drones.
You keep missile cruisers to launch your own missiles. You keep destroyers to take out subs. Even the carriers are seen as giant floating targets now. Other tech simply does everything they do better and cheaper.
These things cost a king's ransom. And we're broke. Every ship we build costs billions. The new aircraft carriers are $10-15 billion. Subs are $2+ billion. Then you have to pay to operate and maintain them. The cost to do that is eye-watering. Now that's a cost of doing business if you're protecting your coasts and protecting your trade routes. But for the last 80 years, we've used our navy as a force multiplier so we could be the global police and fight more than a few totally unnecessary wars for the bankers and the Israelis. We can't afford that.
Eisenhower warned us about the Military-Industrial-Complex in the 1950s. We all know the message. Money, prestige, and tradition are powerful corrupting forces. We end up maintaining what is effectively a wartime military at wartime cost when we don't need it. We support legacy technology meant to win the last war we fought instead of innovating to fight real and current threats. We're wasting money so that rich boys can play with expensive toys.
There's no near-peer threat. No one else has a Navy that's even worth talking about compared to ours anywhere in the world except China. And that Navy is guarding China's coast. It's all in the South China Sea guarding what they call their first island chain. To the extent it's threatening anyone, it's our allies and friends in Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. In fact, it's helping us guard maritime trade because China's just as interested in protecting those trade routes to the Chinese coastal cities as we are. While they have a lot of ships, the Chinese Navy has no combat experience and no long naval tradition to draw upon. Could they fight? The only ones at risk of finding out anytime soon are the Taiwanese, and we've turned that island into a fortress. Remember point 1? Missiles. Lots and lots of missiles and drones sink surface fleets. If there's no competition, why are we feverishly building like there is a need for it other than some admiral's vanity?
If Trump wants to build a few modern subs to modernize the nuclear triad and our own hunter-type anti-submarine boats, I have no problem with that. Russia's subs are quite capable and the Chinese diesel attack subs are apparently quite advanced as well. Nukes are a cornerstone of diplomacy with other nuclear powers. That makes sense. If he wants to maintain the 11 carriers with China threatening SE Asia and our allies there, I'd support it.
But these surface vessels... we've been playing around with new destroyer classes and littoral combat ships for over a decade. The Navy keeps fumbling these and wasting money. Remember the "stealth" ship that was supposed to be the next evolution LCS? They'd planned for hundreds of them. We got 3. It was the Navy's version of the F-35. It was an industrial scale dine-and-dash and the taxpayer got stuck with the check.
I'm hearing about lasers. They're impractical on water. The Navy's own public research shows it and shows why. Atmospheric water, either as sea spray, water vapor, or rain scatters the beam and limits the range. The same for their rail gun experiments. The tech itself blows the barrels of these guns to shreds within a few dozen shots. They're trying to replace large ship-borne guns with these and they're not practical for that. Use missiles and drones. They're cheap and effective.
We're hearing we need these for ship defense now: anti-missile, anti-drone, etc. You know what they use for airborne drones in Ukraine? Shotguns. We're back to flak cannons with airburst munitions. Cheap and effective. We can use missiles to shoot cruise missiles. Hypersonics, there is no defense for. Neither lasers nor rail guns promise to change that.
These people have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on this over decades. The Japanese took what we made available to them and have a functional prototype right now on a ship. They're upgrading our F-16s to be more functional and working on a version of the F-23 we never should have scrapped too. Why? Because our defense contractors and the Congresscritters they bought off are robbing us blind rather than delivering what they promise on schedule and on budget.
hoping they rename or cancel the U.S.S. William (Bill) Clinton) scheduled to be laid down in 2027 — might have to write in to the White House and get this changed to Grace Hopper or someone else (she was the lady Admiral who is credited with developing the first compiler, which laid the foundation for modern programming languages). She joined the Navy in 1943
There is nothing that projects power on the high seas like a Battleship. I can attest to that personally, and support this move 100%. Plus, I have always loved the Iowa Class Battleships, and am looking forward to see if these two ships are as effective as those four ships were at defusing situations by simply showing up.
Be even cooler if they were powered by a fusion generator from the Boss's new fusion acquisition.
But Battleships with lasers?
There is a nine year old in me that's pumped to see Starblazers become reality.
Such a cool factor! 😎
heading off to Iscandar… a great series!
I wonder how far a laser beam can be shot and still be effective. Say four or five miles on a ocean then the curvature of the Earth becomes a factor. Plus if it's lethality is decreased by the atmosphere, what kind of punch does a laser beam have at say twenty or forty miles? Is it a good weapon for a ship?
Depends on how rapid the energy created to fire the weapon can be generated. Hence my desire for the fusion reactors if coupled with the right capacitors I would say horizon to horizon lethal with a minimal delay for rapid fire ability. Up to 24 miles in a 360.
Yes. Multiple gun turrets and laser weapons. #SimplyEpic.
Lots of good jobs for Americans
Plus from the Q posts we know that we were given bad steel for some ships, all thanks to Hillary and Obama, so we definitely need to revamp some of our boats
POTUS mentioned we'd make the ships ourselves with quality steel..
Bethlehem, PA
What happened to Bethlehem Steel?
Nothing. But American steel was primarily made in Pennsylvania. Return of jobs. Good steel.
No, I meant the Company called Bethlehem Steel...went bankrupt in 2003..
No. Didn’t know that. Let’s hope that changes.
End foreign steel.
We need to work on a way to harness all of the liberal tears as a power source, then even they can contribute.
That new fusion reactor deal will take care of that.
The USS Pepe? USS Kek? USS Trollbuster?
Yes!
Where do you think they will be built?
According to Truth social new AI, it is being built at their R&D facility in south Korea no dedicated plant is announced yet.
This AI crap is much faster than Google.
Edit. Sorry I'm also talking about Samsung batteries in another thread,this info is for that,
Trump Class! Soooo awesome! I love it!
If it comes out on the high end of the predicted weight class.
At 40,000 tons It’ll be a Gargantuan Beast for a Warship in modern day. And he wants 25 of them.
He also announced they were planning a new Carrier class too.
I'm a girl and this is SO exciting to me!
The iowa class battle ships were almost 60 tons fully fitted out. Nimitz class carriers 90k tons.
Thank you for this bit of information. If President Trump wants a 40K ton battleship it would be half the displacement of the Iowa class battleships. So in essence a Navy Cruiser.
Maybe due to automation they can cut some tonnage.
Or could it be smaller but more resistant ?
They’ll be between 30-40,000 tons in displacement.
It’ll be a beast of ship. The Current Heaviest Surface Combatant Vessel in service with any nation is the Russian Kirov-Class Battlecruisers. They max out at 28,000 tons displacement with a full combat load out.
Supposing they hit the upper limit of its projected weight. At 40,000 tons It’ll be Heavier than any class of Battleship that has entered service with the U.S Navy outside the South Dakota and Iowa Class Battleships.
Even if you low ball it at 30,000 tons. It’ll be the most heavily armed and armored son of a bitch currently on the Ocean.
And they’re already working on a replacement for the Ford Class Carriers. Wonder what kind of behemoths that’ll produce
I believe he also said he wants to build 40 polar icebreakers. BTW Russia operates about 40 polar icebreakers.
They operate NUCLEAR ice breakers, too. We need to catch up and begin pushing ice around the North Pole.
Nuclear yes! We certainly do need to catch up. There was once a nuclear reactor at the main US research base at McMurdo Station. Reportedly it was decommissioned in 1972. I was there in 74' & 75'.
Happy holidays to you!!
On the ike we had two reactors.
I didn't know that! Thanks for your service.
And Happy Holidays...
Wow...missed that! Thanks Root! 👏
You are welcome! Icebreaker sailor here......USCGC Glacier - Operation Deepfreeze 74' & 75'.
God bless Your Service! 🫡 Bet you could write a book ...
Antarctica is a fascinating place. If you want to go down an interesting rabbit-hole look into Admiral Richard Byrd and "Operation Highjump".
I have! Was wondering if you went there on the USCGC Glacier?
Yes the ole' Big Red - USCGC Glacier. The Glacier was scrapped during the Obama years. The Glacier Society petitioned our government to save the ship to be used as a museum for polar exploration. It was the most powerful icebreaker in the US fleet at the time.
You should write a book!
Don't forget about the Army too!
The Army needs to get lighter, faster and get off the damn roads (said with emphasis). Nobody will say it if they realize it, that major ground war for us is a thing of the past.
Agreed!
Should we drone on with you ?
Are you saying the Army needs to go airborne or off road? Todays tanks have the same problems as tanks from decades ago, you get them off road then they sink up to their turrets in muddy fields.
Tje army needs to adapt to drone warfare. It should include a system to control airspace against drones.
Off road. But all of the armored vehicles have a real sinking problem. I am not sure on the Stryker. I competed for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle but I lost the builder two days before the proposal was due. I could have traversed any terrain, including water. But what they bought will sink up to its axles on anything other than hard terrain. I was anticipating mountains and rice paddies. And mine made the helicopter weight limit.
Don't worry AL, he won't!
A Battleship as in BB battleship? HOLY SHIT! I wonder if it'll have large guns or just settle with 155mm guns from other concepts... I doubt we'll see 8 inch or 16 inch... but that'd be the dream...
Lasers are mostly for close in, shooting down missiles, drones and some aircraft.
Maybe eventually railguns?
Exciting!
TDLR: We shouldn't be building this stuff. Go ahead and downvote this. Mods, you do you.
But why are we doing this? Why are we cheering this?
What is the purpose of a navy? To defend our coastal waters, to defend our trade routes, to impose our will militarily from the seas. Sailors, if your Naval Academy days tell you to correct this, have at it. Our coasts are well defended with the current fleets. That's true both in the Atlantic and the Pacific. In fact, we're more than adequately equipped to control the waters of both N. and S. America.
Achievement Unlocked! Monroe Doctrine: Naval :check:
Can we defend our trade routes? Sure. That's what the 11 aircraft carriers we have do. We patrol the Panama Canal, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Malacca. The world's trillions of dollars of maritime trade are all protected at enormous expense by the US Navy. We saw that when the Yemenis got frisky and started shooting. No one else had anything meaningful to contribute. It was the US Navy that did the work defending the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. About the only thing we really don't do is control the Arctic and that's because nothing goes there except Russian icebreakers. Fine. Let them have that.
Achievement Unlocked! Safe Passage: Maritime :check:
Can we impose our will from the seas? Yes. We have 11 aircraft carriers. If we want to put ordnance on a target anywhere on the planet, we can do it. We park a carrier offshore, and it's a floating airbase. We use them to threaten other countries all the time. Even with regular rotations for maintenance, we maintain this capability all over the world.
Achievement Unlocked! Gunboat Diplomacy :check:
But here's the catch.
We don't build battleships anymore. Air power negated them in WW2. They were relics of the Age of Sail when you put cannons on a boat in order to bombard fixed positions. For the last 80 years, we used planes to do that. Now we use precision-guided missiles and drones.
You keep missile cruisers to launch your own missiles. You keep destroyers to take out subs. Even the carriers are seen as giant floating targets now. Other tech simply does everything they do better and cheaper.
Eisenhower warned us about the Military-Industrial-Complex in the 1950s. We all know the message. Money, prestige, and tradition are powerful corrupting forces. We end up maintaining what is effectively a wartime military at wartime cost when we don't need it. We support legacy technology meant to win the last war we fought instead of innovating to fight real and current threats. We're wasting money so that rich boys can play with expensive toys.
If Trump wants to build a few modern subs to modernize the nuclear triad and our own hunter-type anti-submarine boats, I have no problem with that. Russia's subs are quite capable and the Chinese diesel attack subs are apparently quite advanced as well. Nukes are a cornerstone of diplomacy with other nuclear powers. That makes sense. If he wants to maintain the 11 carriers with China threatening SE Asia and our allies there, I'd support it.
But these surface vessels... we've been playing around with new destroyer classes and littoral combat ships for over a decade. The Navy keeps fumbling these and wasting money. Remember the "stealth" ship that was supposed to be the next evolution LCS? They'd planned for hundreds of them. We got 3. It was the Navy's version of the F-35. It was an industrial scale dine-and-dash and the taxpayer got stuck with the check.
I'm hearing about lasers. They're impractical on water. The Navy's own public research shows it and shows why. Atmospheric water, either as sea spray, water vapor, or rain scatters the beam and limits the range. The same for their rail gun experiments. The tech itself blows the barrels of these guns to shreds within a few dozen shots. They're trying to replace large ship-borne guns with these and they're not practical for that. Use missiles and drones. They're cheap and effective.
We're hearing we need these for ship defense now: anti-missile, anti-drone, etc. You know what they use for airborne drones in Ukraine? Shotguns. We're back to flak cannons with airburst munitions. Cheap and effective. We can use missiles to shoot cruise missiles. Hypersonics, there is no defense for. Neither lasers nor rail guns promise to change that.
These people have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on this over decades. The Japanese took what we made available to them and have a functional prototype right now on a ship. They're upgrading our F-16s to be more functional and working on a version of the F-23 we never should have scrapped too. Why? Because our defense contractors and the Congresscritters they bought off are robbing us blind rather than delivering what they promise on schedule and on budget.
We shouldn't be building this stuff.
hoping they rename or cancel the U.S.S. William (Bill) Clinton) scheduled to be laid down in 2027 — might have to write in to the White House and get this changed to Grace Hopper or someone else (she was the lady Admiral who is credited with developing the first compiler, which laid the foundation for modern programming languages). She joined the Navy in 1943
I agree! Change all items with the names of traitors! Love the idea for the new name Malachi!
There is nothing that projects power on the high seas like a Battleship. I can attest to that personally, and support this move 100%. Plus, I have always loved the Iowa Class Battleships, and am looking forward to see if these two ships are as effective as those four ships were at defusing situations by simply showing up.
I was thinking about calling the recruiter and telling them I want to join and I identify as a 20 year old. I want to shoot lasers.
Wish i could go back in.
Learn to weld, operate cad, and large automated manufacturing equipent operations and repair.
I want SHARKS WITH FRICKIN' LASER BEAMS ATTACHED TO THEIR HEADS!
One of our favorite lines! 😹
https://youtu.be/INFavIUmhcE?si=dxIjfIoWDoLgcHqh
tries so hard not to think of Ben Sisko's Motherfucking Pimp Hand.