Key Points
Trump’s battleship plan clashes with decades of U.S. naval strategy and technology shifts
Experts described it as a “prestige project,” a “bomb magnet” and said that “this ship will never sail.”
Even if it were technically feasible, the cost of building the battleship would be prohibitive.
Battleships cannot exist for there is no armor that can survive modern weapons. You cannot brawl it out against a bomb run and your weapons fire only 100km at best.
It is excellent for blasting away at a shoreline when you have absolute air and naval control. For reducing a defenseless region to rubble without using expensive (and anonymous) missiles or planes.
“And in today’s news, the USS Trump has shelled the deserted remains of Caracas for the 3rd day running.”
Even in the battleship era, they had better ships for shore bombardment called “monitors” (after the Civil War-era ships named after USS Monitor that looked similar even though that wasn’t their purpose). A shallow-draft ship just large enough to hold a single battleship turret was a much more economical solution.
Or fishing boats.