No, It's Not a Battleship
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The Trump administration's proposal for a new warship design has sparked a lively debate, with many commenters dismissing it as a frivolous, poorly conceived idea born out of Trump's whims rather than a serious military initiative. Some drew parallels with the infamous "Homer" from The Simpsons, a fictional tank that was similarly conceived without regard for practicality or functionality. As one commenter noted, the proposal is likely to result in wasted millions or billions of dollars, while others joked about the aesthetic appeal of the design, with the author [hermitcrab] quipping "But think of the aesthetics!" The discussion highlights the tension between the perceived frivolity of the proposal and the potential real-world consequences of pursuing it.
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The Navy is gonna slow role this thing till he's out of office then reform the plan. Which is insanely annoying to me as a tax payer as we've basically had 25 years of the Navy's procurement being an absolute disaster, and now we're gonna lost another 4+ years over Trump's idiotic showboating.
Read up on what his proposed alternative was.
Perhaps you could give a summary?
Basically he wanted the Army to do a bunch of tests we already knew the outcome of: that the munitions in question would defeat the armor. This wasn't some sort of scandal or surprise to the pentagon. No armored vehicle is invincible, and the Bradley is already as heavily armored as is practical to cross bridges without them collapsing, etc.
Burton made a ton of enemies treating this like some sort of huge scandal he was uncovering, but in reality he was distorting the situation, then used it to popularize his book.
Basically he's just a grifter, but because he was saying contrarian things a bunch of people who had no idea what was actually happening bought into his bullshit.
It's similar to what happened with the "Fighter Mafia" where the public latched onto it without understanding how utterly bullshit the contrarian proposal actually was.
both of these are NOT documentaries, they wildly misrepresent reality and are basically fiction
Millions—if not billions—of dollars are likely to be wasted on this over the coming years.
Even the name is flawed.
The battleship was clearly vulnerable to airpower in WWII. Much less so in WW1.
It’s an exaggeration saying that they were outdated in WW1, as they basically acted as a deterrent, at enormous expense. Too big, too slow, too expensive. The argument was playing out even prior to WW1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship
Aircraft carriers took over, as you say.
Also there were several battlecruiser/cruiser vs battlecruiser/cruiser actions.
Jutland was influential, but mainly just resulted in big ships doing nothing.
That is sort of the role nuclear weapons have too I guess?
You’re the first one in this thread mentioning him.
https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/USS-Defiant-T...
In other words, yes it is billions pushed back into the economy, and yes, there will likely be very little "permanent" to show for it (and presumably the navy won't be much better for it) but it's not like they're just burying the cash.
It's important to understand that for the military industrial complex the goal is to "feed the machine", not actually to produce anything. In that sense this money is not wasted, it's doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
Ah. I won't pretend to agree or even remotely understand this. It very much seems to me that you've taken Eisenhower's speech and made that "what is supposed to happen."?
I can assure you no procurement on DoD side or vendor would ever work from that assumption, nor would they refer to the process as "feeding the machine" or "the military industrial complex."
Firstly, it's all public information and shareholder exposed for most of the e companies. You will never see "50 bn - Maintaining Industrial ties/contracts under the cover of a joint strike-fighter program."
Second, You WILL see losses, dismissals, and charges posted when Nunn-McMurdy is triggered. elected officials, shipyard commanders, and BoDs have gone down because of projects like zumwalt, f35, etc.
That is the constituents, original purchasers etc saying "this is bad and a disgrace." Just because we all like to ignore it doesn't mean it is "expected."
The "spent billions" isn't about me/my constituents/the US not having those billions. It's that those billions where finely calculated by (supposed) experts to help maintain PPP advantages over adversaries.
When one "side" starts playing pretend with money (IE; using 50 billion in western currency on the Zumwalt class of destroyers before tossing them) the other side doesn't do the same, and stop taking advantage of PPP.
If we are extremely lucky the outcome of this will be increased shipyard capacity and refined shipbuilding practices just in time to switch back to building a multitude of actually-useful ships.
But most likely is that this ends up delaying the U.S.'s ability to build back its navy in time to matter, which is a tremendous issue given how we do our commerce and where some of our deepest friends are physically located.
https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/436695...
> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.
In the early 2000’s, that didn't matter so much, but the loss of institutional knowledge, capability and manufacturing capacity is now at the point that it seems unlikely to be fixed without a significant amount of public interest and a huge amount of investment, neither of which seem likely without some crisis, at which point it will likely be too late.
The Navy stopped trying to install railguns back in 2021 but never stopped development.
I assume the lasers are future tech that sound cool, except this thing will be cancelled right after the next admin renames Dept of War back to DoD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system
part 1: https://www.navalgazing.net/Lasers-at-Sea-Part-1
NB/ Lasers do not cope well with smoke, fog or rain.
It's never actually been renamed. They just changed the stationery and website: https://www.usa.gov/agencies/u-s-department-of-defense.
Just like how Trump called in workers to put his name on the Kennedy Center building. Changing the name requires an act of Congress: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/76i
At least I have the new updated globe with the renamed Gulf of America. They promised to send overlay stickers once Greenland and Canada become US states.
It had some potential, but that potential has been squandered, at great cost.
Planned: 29 Completed: 3 Canceled: 26 Active: 3
Yet, unlike the Zumwalts, they are considered a good boat.
In some ways there's a similar situation with the F-22 vs F-35, though those two may have a bit more of a difference on roles and requirements.
Why would you take this as an indication of the “best we can do”?
For 'practical best' you'd normally point people to examples of warships the U.S. actually can build without much drama, but if you try this with the Navy you're basically left with, what, the last LPD class?
10 years ago you'd call the Virginia SSNs a success, but even those have now run into construction delays due to various issues, even as the Navy needs their #1 priority (Columbia-class SSBN, also delayed) to succeed to decommission the Ohios on time.
I guess I question this, too. This “battleship” a cartoon drawn for the President. It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
There is a broader, genuine criticism of American warship building. But this battleship has as much to do with that as do rubber ducks.
> When asked if the new ship class is meant to counter China, Trump said: “It’s a counter to everybody. It’s not China.”The new ships will replace the Navy’s next-generation DDG(X) program, which was projected to be about half the size of this proposed battleship. Construction is slated to begin in the early 2030s with the Navy serving as the lead design agent for the effort, USNI News understands. The Navy first unveiled the DDG(X) concept in 2022.
Read the original comment they made again. They weren't talking about the proposed battleship at all, but about broader issues the U.S. Navy is already experiencing trying to build the already-approved designs.
> It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
Indeed, it is beyond our current practical best, even if we assume the cartoon would ever be built. Which is, I suspect, what elicited the comment in the first place.
The military-industrial complex we have is the only one we got.
Just Zumwalt and LCS alone are like $50 billion burned up for nothing.
The Navy's issues with procurement go all the way back to the retiring of the Oliver Hazard Perry class without a suitable replacement in the pipeline.
https://www.twz.com/sea/navys-cruiser-modernization-a-lesson...
Given 90s-era NATO air defences are shooting down Russia’s newest hypersonic missiles [1], I’m continuing to treat the category as more hype than utility.
[1] https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2024/11/20/ukraines-patrio...
May. Or maybe the whole thing is just hype.
They probably do. But absent positive profiling, it doesn’t make sense to design against a hypothetical super weapon.
Anticipating the future and development counters/mitigations is at the very core of what pentagon planners do.
Is this when they aren’t making pretty boats with pictures on the back?
Which with the way the US is being managed might be true, but generally there's no evidence that China has a missile which cannot be intercepted by refined means we already know.
Well China has been building aircraft carrier mockups on train rails in the desert to test something on them while they're in motion...so I'd say unclear
Back in my day, the onus was on the person making the claim to provide evidence. Anything else is just lazy.
Demanding people include evidence for stuff that is literally a simple google away is absurd. „China aircraft carrier Desert“.
> Anything else is just lazy.
As is expecting to be spoonfed trivial stuff
25% interception rate on shit tier Kinzhals last year, which require salvoing all 32 interceptors from patriot battery, a patriot pac3 mse, aka the most advanced variant from 10 years ago, not 90s. It's dropped to 6% now after RU improvement.
Math basically saying ~10 kinzhals can overwhelm typical carrier group with couple flight3 Burkes assuming all Burke VLS was dedicated to ABM, which it's not. Extrapolate to a more performant PRC hypersonic, and interception rate might approach 0. There's nothing in US missile defense tests (staged ballistic trajectories / simple decoys) that remotely suggest they have capable interceptors or the magazine depth to survive even moderate amount of high end hypersonics. Which is going to proliferate, see PRC building 100k commodity hypersonics for potential floor. Bundle that with space ISR and expeditionary navy model is even more dead in 10-15 years.
Hence IMO it's rational USnavy modernization/recapitalization is such a shit show. US legislatively locked in 11 carrier navy with all the supporting surface fleet that entails. Shit needs to be built, by law, but there's nothing competent to build in face of AShM math, so keep grafting and fucking around. It's not like USN acquisitions wasn't shit fucked before Trump.
All of US MIC acquisition behavior makes sense if one accepts that navy is probably fucked (including subsurface), the only thing US really needs for hegemony (excluding PRC containment, which US functionally can't), is 100-200 B21s (naval tacair/rip f/a-xx likely also fucked) to bomb whatever mid sized countries they want with impunity without putting surface fleet at risk (imagine Houthis with hypersonics). Any legacy naval hulls, tacair frames with some modernization will still black magic overmatch vs everyone except PRC for peacetime dick measuring. TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else. So USN does whatever it wants, which includes a lot of flailing because it doesn't really know what to do at all.
For PRC missiles, see tandem missile demonstration a few years ago, two missiles launched from different launch sites coordinated to hit moving ship at sea. AKA PRC already have the ISR / kill chain to hit moving ships synced to time and space. Something basically no one else has demonstrated. Now extrapolate that out 10 years, while they (and US) are proliferating spaced based C4ISR = basically any surface fleet anywhere is dead, and even if we downgrade to only static targets, that means all US logistics, i.e. unrep are dead which leaves surface fleet single deployment assets. DDG barely has enough endurance for a few days of high tempo operations (fuel and weapons), carriers has endurance but without replenishment, no ammo, and without DDG escorts no protection.
Eh the USN can still maintain superiority outside of the South China Sea which means control of global trade. It’s not like it’s useless or anything even if the Taiwan straight turns into a dead zone or if the USN has to worry about missiles from the Chinese mainland. China also has to worry about missiles hitting their mainland industrial centers and naval facilities too.
But again that doesn't mean USN can't operate permissively vs literally anyone else, even on legacy platforms that still grossly overmatches every other adversary regardless of acquisition malpractice.
> Meanwhile PRC has global strike eggs is mostly in mainland based ICBMs that skips entire delivery vehicle middle man and can potentially hit CONUS and everything in between with high survivability.
You are just describing nuclear war here, which seems unrealistic to me. China knows they’ll lose ocean access and trade will be stoped, which means no oil, hence why they’ve gone all-in in EVs and “green” technology. Piping in oil from Russia or whatever is a fantasy - pipelines will just get blown up.
Chinese missiles flying all over the world to sink blue water naval ships also seems unrealistic to me. They have to find the ships, for starters. This is a feat much more sensible in and around the Taiwan Straight or the South China Sea. But in your excitement you are forgetting that while certainly China can rain down missiles on enemy forces in the region, those same enemies can strike back too. Or are these hypersonic missiles so scary and advanced and all allied forces will just have to sit quietly while their military and industrial equipment is bombed? If that’s the case, what’s China waiting for?
> Look at DoDs China report last few years, specifically PRC fielded conventional strike.
Could you link to a specific paper or report that you are referring to? I read these from time to time.
You described nuclear war first with mainland conventional strikes. Regardless, 2025 DoD china report lists fielded conventional strikes with west coast on the map for a reason, they are formally acknowledging CONUS conventional vulnerability. There's popular discourse that CONUS ICBM strikes = nuke back, but that's like saying mainland cruise missile strikes = nuke back. Afterall US cruise missiles are nuclear capable (i.e. what Trump explicitly wants for Trump / Defiant class) and US cruise missiles designed for terrain hugging to minimize detection time, no different than low ICBM response time. Reality is, once conventional CONUS vulnerability exists, the hit me and get nuked bluster no longer holds. US planners now has to account for CONUS strikes... hence why golden dome is a thing, nice piece of security theatre for masses when PRC ability to hit CONUS becomes unavoidable. Like folks can dismiss it as Trumps ego project, but it coincides with US military officials informally acknowledging CONUS vulnerability in media last few years, now made formal with new PRC fielded conventional strike map.
>knows they’ll lose ocean access
Do they, or do they know they can dismantle USN ability to SLOC blockade, especially energy routes. Mind you US can still use CENTCOM forces and political leverage to prevent MENA producers from selling, but this subject is about navy and current PRC rocketry A2D2 is likely in position to prevent US from SLOC blockade.
>pipelines will just get blown up
Yes, incidentally the 2025 Chinese conventional strike map covers Albertan oil infra to US... reminder US still imports 30% oil due to refinery mismatch.
> all over the world... find the ships, for starters
See PRC launching 100s of ISR sats last few years, SCS has persistent coverage already, but now rest of world has decent coverage by this point too. Either way context is 5-10 year mega constellation roll out by which time there very resilient and redundant will be global ISR / kill chain. Their space infra has already moved beyond backyard in last few years.
>same enemies can strike back
Sure but in what volume? Enough to win attrition game? It's not just hypersonics, see PRC acquiring 1m+ loitering munitions, separate order from 1m+ drones, likely shaheed tier with 1IC coverage. Hypersonics for high end assets, there's stupendous low/mid end mop up fires asymmetry to dismantle industrial base within 1-2IC. PRC has the munition depth to win the attrition game. The side with most fires bandwidth can feasibly dismantle adversary ability to fire back. All this from mainland platforms significantly more survivable because PRC doctrine assumes being hit and designed to keep hitting back. At some point the theatre aimpoint math becomes self evident, PRC by virtue of simply being a massive countries with ample hardened targets is in position to survive being hits while their adversaries are not. This one of the most glaring asymmetries, i.e. US planners cannot get JP to disperse or harden.
> waiting for
PRC isn't trigger happy, either way every year that passes PRC position in theatre gets stronger, but most importantly autarky and global strike capacity also increases. i.e. in about 10 years, coal to olefin (petchem) and EV penetration trend lines will make PRC close to oil independent, - their energy autarky will exceed US domestic oil who won't fix refinery mixmatch in same time period. Which circles back to CAN/US pipeline vulnerability. Energy autarky mismatch probably most important consideration, even if PRC can break USN SLOC blockade, as I mentioned, US has other tools to disrupt MENA energy flows. Other capabilities like mega constellation ISR increasing prompt global strike coordination, surging SSN and XXLUUV output, lots of reasons to wait and build up. Ideally build up so asymmetry so obvious US compelled to leave East Asian on her own. That's the ultimate prize, not just TW>
>report
https://media.defense.gov/2025/Dec/23/2003849070/-1/-1/1/ANN...
see page 85 for fielded conventional strike. You can compare past report map, the new one doesn't even bother labelling 1/2iC anymore because those defense lines are functionally dead vis a vis PRC procurements last few years.
I don’t think so, because if China invades Taiwan or takes similar enough action, and the United States and Japan come to the defense of Taiwan, an attack on the continental United States would not just be disproportionally stupid, but it would be an escalatory mistake as well, because you’ve now just declared actual war on the United States versus your more ‘limited’ war with the aim of only taking Taiwan. You see the difference, right?
But for China to attack Taiwan and the US and Japan to strike Chinese forces, it sort of requires China to then strike US and allied forces throughout the entire region. Attacking Kadena or even striking mainland Japanese industrial facilities, shipyards, &c. And then facing retaliatory strikes on Chinese industrial-military targets seems about to be fair game, and of course China doesn’t view the loss or usage of human capital in the same way that western countries do. I don’t think such a scenario here immediately results in nuclear war, even if the mainland is struck unless the US or Japan start targeting first/second strike capabilities or cause mass civilian casualties. The reason being, well, China would have struck US and Japanese bases first. And frankly if they don’t do that in the opening salvo of the war they’re stupid anyway.
> Do they, or do they know they can dismantle USN ability to SLOC blockade, especially energy routes.
They can’t. This is nonsense.
> Yes, incidentally the 2025 Chinese conventional strike map covers Albertan oil infra to US... reminder US still imports 30% oil due to refinery mismatch.
Sure, in the unlikely scenario that China also attacks Canada (might as well attack everyone at this point), yes US imports go down causing consumer harm, but China’s oil imports drop to 0. When you think about attrition you have to consider attrition for both sides, not just one. China has gone all-in on “green” tech precisely because they cannot win in a war in which they are dependent on oil - see US actions in Venezuela and the Middle East.
> See PRC launching 100s of ISR sats last few years, SCS has persistent coverage already, but now rest of world has decent coverage by this point too. Either way context is 5-10 year mega constellation roll out by which time there very resilient and redundant will be global ISR / kill chain. Their space infra has already moved beyond backyard in last few years.
Ok and the US does that too over the next 5-10 years (assuming capabilities don’t exist today, though they likely do). Now what? China hasn’t really gained an advantage here, launching missiles all over the world could be misconstrued as a nuclear attack and requiring a nuclear response. Is China going to launch missiles at Bahrain, UAE, Korea, the EU, and everyone else? Doesn’t seem realistic.
> PRC isn't trigger happy, either way every year that passes PRC position in theatre gets stronger, but most importantly autarky and global strike capacity also increases. i.e. in about 10 years, coal to olefin (petchem) and EV penetration trend lines will make PRC close to oil independent, - their energy autarky will exceed US domestic oil who won't fix refinery mixmatch in same time period. Which circles back to CAN/US pipeline vulnerability. Energy autarky mismatch probably most important consideration, even if PRC can break USN SLOC blockade, as I mentioned, US has other tools to disrupt MENA energy flows. Other capabilities like mega constellation ISR increasing prompt global strike coordination, surging SSN and XXLUUV output, lots of reasons to wait and build up. Ideally build up so asymmetry so obvious US compelled to leave East Asian on her own. That's the ultimate prize, not just TW
You’re right about two things: China will get stronger and more capable, and it will be less reliant as a country on oil, but you still can’t fly jet fighters with EV batteries and the wealthy markets (EU, US) are turning away from EVs as domestic policy and spending money securing rare earth refining capabilities. All the time you give to China also has to be given to other countries to react and plan too - which I think is often overlooked because western news rants about western failures all day but can’t speak mandarin and don’t have a clue about China’s issues as well.
But I think what you’re wrong about here is the threat, precisely because you are providing a contradiction. There are two geopolitical things that matter here. One is Taiwan as part of the first island chain - I.e. good for US monitoring of Chinese naval activity, and second, the semiconductors.
The longer China waits, the less important Taiwan is to the US. It can build other facilities, semiconductor manufacturing can be invested away from Taiwan too. And as you are asserting, I think, allows the Chinese navy to go and operate in the Pacific with impunity. Frankly I don’t know why they care if the US knows where their ships are anyway. What’s the point of the forces when we don’t have any interest in war in the first place? Does China want to spend this money and then launch missiles at Houthi rebels? Be my guest.
But what exactly does that matter in the world you’ve described? For all of these things to happen on a longer timeframe, the US doesn’t have to “leave” Asia. What is China going to do if the US keeps a base in Japan or the Philippines? Bomb it? Ah ok, well now the US has also built hypersonic missiles and all of these capabilities (because we already have them today anyway) and now if they attack US forces the US gets to do the scary boogeyman thing that you’re asserting China can do and blow up all of their ships with indefensible missiles strikes because they know where all the ships are “because satellites”.
I just do not find “China attacks everything the US has ever built and successfully destroys it and there is nothing the US can do” very convincing.
Why assume PRC attacks US+co first? This 2015s talking point based on limited PLA modernization, use it or lose it force structure, so they would be smart to use first, then. 2025+ reality is PRC has survivable fires complex to dismantle 1/2IC anytime. They're in position to bait US+co into firing first if they want. BTW US coming to assist TW is already declaring full scale war over Chinese sovereignty / territory, there's no difference if US wants to limit (i.e. prevent landings) because TW scenario is full war scenario where PRC gets vote in escalation, western analytic conflation over limited/regional war is (mis)attribution to PRC previously not able to prosecute a broader war, but PRC will always prosecute the largest possible war relative to capability over TW, and now that includes CONUS. Sure PRC GAZAing JP/SKR, obviously JP/SKR will want to counter strike mainland, but that opens CONUS to attack and frankly that's a US alliance management problem, because ultimately broader war is net good for PRC strategic stretch goals - to kick US out east asia, that can really only be done by physically dismantling US basing in region, bonus if it deindustrialized JP/SKR who are peacetime competitors vs PRC, who again, is structured to retain more industrial base and reconstitute faster.
>This is nonsense
This is 2025, I mention 2025 DoD report for a reason. Look at the rocketry coverage - encompasses all SLOCs from PRC cost to MENA + 1500km, i.e. standoff carrier range. It's time to stop coping. USN surface fleet is on paper not survivable anymore, pentagon paper. Again once people accept reality of hemispheric hypersonic A2D2, everything about incompetent USN procurement makes sense. This has been obvious for years btw, those missiles exist pre 2025, the latest report just decided to acknowledge reality.
>hasn’t really gained an advantage here
Advantage is massive. First it closes disadvantage, US already has global strike expeditionary model. PRC equalizing = US losing advantage. PRC having more survivable and high-end fires = PRC can hit anywhere on earth globally within hour using purely mainland platforms not vulnerable to disruption, unlike US carriers/bombers with long logistics tail. This advantage potentially step down from rods from god. BTW US can have this too in SSGN with CPS, but we talking about a few 100 VLS tubes that needs days/weeks of prepositioning vs 10000s from PRC mainland.
>going to launch missiles
You know how US gets to simply bomb non nuclear countries with impunity. The answer is PRC gets that privilege too, if war vs US escalates, all global US military assets are on the table. Countries are going to weigh if US protection worth the risk and when they see US simply can't protect they have choices to make, yes this means US nuke umbrella gets will get tested.
> oil imports drop to 0. > China’s issues as well > other countries to react and plan too
What's PRC energy production composition? They make 4m+ million barrels, enough to cover all industrial use, i.e. they can run current industrial output on purely domestic oil alone. USN uses like 100k oil per day, PRC domestic production can sustain 40 USNs in perpetuity, they don't need to electrify 6gen. Most oil is used for transportation, of which really diesel is critical (freight). That's where their 1-2 million barrel of CTO equivalents, i.e. they can displace industrial oil with coal to maintain trucking fleet and ration consumer transport oil. How much transport disruption is function of EV penetration, right now a lot in 10 years, minimal. Reminder PRC is actually a continental size power with huge energy assets, not as much as US relative to population, but enough to prosecute forever war with PRC industrial base, i.e. the one that already outproduces everyone combined (as materially not value add). PRC is not Japan, PRC has functionally infinite resources and current mismatch is something that can and is being engineered around. PRC is also not west, because they have industrial base to build a lot of hammers, and eventually hammers get used. PRC is obviously not VZ/MENA who can't hit US back, while PRC can. IMO face PRC realities before fixating on PRC issues. As for other countries reaction/plan, it's factored in, reality is we know what level of infra expansion or acquisition west is capable of, we know PRC china speed trendlines, hence limit extrapolation to reasonable 10 year timeframe.
> two geopolitical things that matter here > don’t have any interest in war in the first place
US+co seems to have interest in intervening in Chinese civil war, which itself exists due to US support over last 70 years. There's a world where US facilitates peaceful reunification on PRC terms and maybe PRC can live with relatively benign US hanging around in east Asia. But if transition not peaceful, then there is every reason to simply kick US out of east Asia. This key distinction, TW is political goal, kicking US out of east asia is geopolitical / regional hegemony goal. That's the overarching geopolitics that matters. Spheres of influence and all that.
> China attacks everything the US has ever built and successfully destroys it and there is nothing the US can do” very convincing.
It's very convincing because the flip side is US can likely destroy PLAN as well. When I say surface fleet is dead, I include PRC / everyone. The problem is USN likes to launch missiles at Houthis, US global security posture is predicated on survivable expeditionary navy. PRC is not. After both sides lose their boats, US loses most strategic posture, while PRC can rebuild faster. The point is US posture is uniquely vulnerable, because of course it is, PRC spend last 30 years specifically dismantling US force structure. US force structure have been distracted by GWOT, procurement drama... and just geopolitical reality of PRC industrial base, has having difficulty doing the opposite.
Because the US has no interest in a war with China?
Actually attacking the US is literally the worst possible idea for China though. They can win a short, high-intensity war over Taiwan and leverage US political chaos and dysfunction to achieve their goals, but attacking the actual United States would quickly, and cohesively force the United States to get its shit together.
I don’t have any illusions about American Exceptionalism, but China’s strengths in manpower and manufacturing capacity don’t have the leverage that you think they do when a land-oriented power (China) has to engage in warfare with a naval and air-based power. China middling oil production would be destroyed by US missiles and it would be unable to import more oil. That’s a big problem that a land-based power isn’t going to be able to easily overcome. But I guess as you say “China has missiles, China blow up all US forces everywhere” or something like that.
And even winning a war doesn’t “kick” the US out of East Asia. They can just maintain existing bases and naval forces. What’s China going to do about it? Are you going to bomb Japan and Korea? Launch missiles at Saudi Arabia since they aren’t selling you any more oil? The scenario you are fantasizing about which is effectively “China rains down missiles on everything and nobody can do anything about it” is really just not realistic and you keep assuming that other countries don’t have missiles or capabilities or the ability to cause significant harm to Chinese interests.
If you really believe that China launching an invasion of Taiwan (I don’t care if it’s an internal affair or not, China takes action against the US and we just sell Taiwan weapons and take actions against China and so forth) legitimizes striking the continental United States none of this technology you’re talking about matters because your argument is basically “everything escalates to nuclear war” so what does anyone care about how much the US or China wastes on military assets?
But China doesn’t have any intentions of seeing its civilization destroyed, nor does the US, so once you take nuclear war off the table, you have to manage escalation to avoid nuclear war, which is why China is building so many surface ships.
> When I say surface fleet is dead, I include PRC / everyone. The problem is USN likes to launch missiles at Houthis, US global security posture is predicated on survivable expeditionary navy. PRC is not. After both sides lose their boats, US loses most strategic posture, while PRC can rebuild faster. The point is US posture is uniquely vulnerable, because of course it is, PRC spend last 30 years specifically dismantling US force structure. US force structure have been distracted by GWOT, procurement drama... and just geopolitical reality of PRC industrial base, has having difficulty doing the opposite.
The PLAN doesn’t know how to fight a war. The GWOT and similar operations are done so the United States can continue to make sure everything works, logistics concerns are ironed out, and more. There are other reasons for these engagements, of course.
I don’t really accept your theory the Chinese military will just launch missiles and blow up all USN ships, which I think is a fundamental disagreement here and I am not convinced by your writing to change my mind.
> US+co seems to have interest in intervening in Chinese civil war, which itself exists due to US support over last 70 years.
China overplayed its hand with the seizure of Hong Kong, restricting rare earth exports from Chinese refineries, and so-called wolf warrior diplomacy. It had a very easy path to assimilate Taiwan without bloodshed but now it’s going to have to fight over it do no real good reason. The US and Americans in general don’t really care too much about Taiwan, and had China just continued to be a good partner and showed kindness toward Taiwan it would have won the long game and convinced Taiwan to rejoin peacefully. It’s really unfortunate. The US and China don’t need to fight, but I think Xi Jingpin specifically and China’s posture generall has caused the US to have to support Taiwan instead. There are a long list of grievances both sides can legitimately levy at each other, but I think China was the one to rekindle the issue while the US was thinking hey let’s all just trade and get along. I know you’ll disagree but I’ve reviewed enough of the history of both countries and the region to know that this is the case.
What is fuss over US coming to TW defense then? US wants to prevent PRC reunification regardless of method, that's ample reason for war. If US doesn't want war, just have state tell PRC TW is internal problem.
> get its shit together
How, it takes years to build up modern atrophied industrial base + workforce. It will take even longer to degrade PRC industrial base. Reminder US vs Iraq took 5 carrier groups, favourable regional basing and unsustainably high tempo permissive operations 6 weeks to dismantle Iraq... scale that to PRC size... charitably 500x more industrially capable than Iraq with greater tech base, it will take US+co decades, and US MIC was much better capitalized then, and US industry more productive (as in actual material production not value add). Meanwhile, US basing and posture vs PRC is significantly worse than Iraq, i.e. relative fire generation ability is even worse at standoff range, assuming it even exists. It is innumerate thinking US+co can substantially degrade PRC knowing basic numbers. Either way this is dependant on PRC mainland being hit, is US going to permit mainland attacks from 1IC? What if PRC creams JP, PH for using basing to undermine PRC efforts? Attacking via proxies isn't some magical lifehack that keeps CONUS safe, especially with US basing. This isn't UKR where US has deniability shipping shit from Poland. Hitting mainland from theatre with US basing opens proportional CONUS attack.
> land oriented
Who cares? It's not about land/sea/air oriented, it's about long range strikes oriented, just because PRC doesn't double down on supremely vulnerable navy/airforce to project fires doesn't mean they cannot prosecute long range fires. Again this is 2025, that 8000km DF27 land attack to CONUS exist for a reason. Other missiles to hit tankers/unrep within stand off range etc all the logistics chain that USN and USAF depends to even operate in theatre. There's a reason why is DDGX and FAXX getting the ugly step child treatment, because none of them or their sustainment are survivable in their platform range. When US depend on middle platform to deliver fires, and those middle platforms cannot operate because their even more vulnerable sustainment goes boom, US muh boats and planes is at massive long range fires disadvantage over "land" based fires that simply skips middlemen. And PRC gets to do that precisely because they have industrial base to make disposable single shot long range fires economical.
Extrapolate to land attack US infra with modest DF27 upgrade, that's all of CONUS oil infra going boom too. Everything US can do to PRC, PRC can do to US in short term, if not already because DoD reports tend to be behind the times. Who do you think will fare better then? PRC with 4x more energy infra for US to strike and magnitude more distributed energy infra. So yes, of course the answer is more missiles because PRC prompt global strike explicitly to attack CONUS strategic targets conventionally was written in PLA future doctrine as far back as 2010s. They explicitly are circumventing vulnerable naval fires for global fires straight from mainland because they understand US Navy+airfoce expeditionary model is shit fucked, having spent 20 years building all the tools to dismantle it. Meanwhile, US institutionally locked into shit fucked model, because again, by law US cannot divest from it.
>bomb Japan and Korea
Yes? If US drawn into TW scenario, escalation logic incentivized to align with geopolitical logic, which is to displace US out of east Asia, which calls for bombing JP/SKR/PH or anyone that assists US materially. They are absolutely on the menu because the gains are huge. As for Saudi + others, just US bases if they contribute to undermining PRC interests. If oil ain't flowing to PRC because US pressure, then remove US pressure. Again note all of CENTCOM is in PRC missile range, that is by design.
>nobody can do anything about it
Did I say that? I said PRC will receive counter fire, but not at scale vs what PRC can dish out. Nobody can do _enough_ about it, that's patently realistic when you look at stockpiles and force balance. Go back to the Iraq example. Now realize PRC has magnitude more than US+co in firepower targeted at JP/SKR/PH etc than US+co has via Iraq.
>escalates to nuclear war
Because I don't think it will. I think it's frankly cope rhetoric US delulus themselves into thinking US can maintain presence in another upcoming hegemons backyard because nukes. That bluff is going to get called because alternative is ceding regional hegemony aspirations forever because US cray cray and will nuke if they can't preposition on other side of globe. BTW PRC went to war with USSR, US in KR, shadow fought France in IndoChina, threated UK over HK, border skirmish with India, aka almost every nuclear state, over strategic considers much less important than TW. US threatening nukes vs PRC over TW isn't credible, nuclear umbrella isn't going to save JP/SKR/PH if they assist US in TW.
>China is building so many surface ships
But they're not? They have 300x military shipyard capacity than US, with one shipyard producing more tonnage than ALL US postwar production, a period where US was rolling out full carriers every year. PRC not doing that, they are keeping an absolutely modest navy relative to their productive capability. There's a reason rocket force is the most prestigious / pillar and reported directly to CMC before recent reforms.
>GWOT
C'mon you think GWOT built any surface warfare competency, see Yemen, see 7th fleet crashing left and right. It's negative experience, history has show correct doctrine + training > legacy experience time and time again.
>don’t really accept your theory... change mind
Don't? I'm not here to change your mind. This is public for others to draw conclusions based on argument.
>rejoin peacefully
Let's not pretend US isn't funding NGOs and various political groups to spike peaceful reunion efforts before HK. Reality post US sponsored sunflower movement was it's obvious if PRC wanted TW back before 2049, or prior due to generational voting habits, they'd have to fight for it. It just so happens fighting may ultimately be the PRC quiet preferrable route since retaking TW peacefully doesn't displace US out of east Asia, only drawing US into TW conflict does. So yes, I disagree, I think US overplayed it's hand pretending it can intervene in TW, and legitimizes PRC reason for extended war, and will leave end my comments here.
If Putin had stopped at Crimea we'd all have lived with it too.
Let’s say you are China and you’ve decided to use your military forces to take Taiwan. You know if you are just facing Taiwan alone you’ll suffer losses and ships will get blown up, but you are ok with that. Glory to the CCP and all. Sorry about those semiconductors planet Earth. Those facilities will be obliterated.
But… the United States and Japan (the two most important partners here in my view) are allies and they aren’t officially allied with Taiwan but are happy to sell weapons and, maybe, and you’re unsure about this, just maybe if China invades Taiwan they may say that this isn’t acceptable to our national security and we will take action to intervene, but let’s say there’s nothing in the cards to attack the Chinese mainland (frankly neither the US or Japan really have an interest in doing that).
So now you are thinking ok, if it’s just us versus Taiwan that’s a piece of cake. But if the US and Japanese militaries intervene and defend Taiwan, maybe your potential success rate drops considerably, maybe to 60% or lower. That’s a problem. What can you do about it?
Well you could… declare that war will take place just in the Taiwan Straight and surrounding area and everyone else’s country is “off limits”. Escalation means chaos. The CCP is all about stability, 100-year old plans within plans and all that.
But if the US and Japan enter the war, you could sink the entire US Navy but they’d have free rein to safely fly in missiles and planes and equipment to their permanent aircraft carrier: Japan.
How long do you think it takes for China to attack a US military installation on Japan? And at that point, what really is the escalation for the US or Japanese to, idk, conduct a limited military operation to attack a Chinese Air Force base in response?
The whole situation, at least in my mind, is so dangerous because the escalatory ladder is fast and steep. What happens if a Chinese missile misses the US base and kills Japanese citizens? How long would Japan put up with a blockade (because you (China) of course have to stop the flow of munitions coming to defend Taiwan), or harassing of Japanese trading ships? If the US had an airbase in Korea or Japan or the Philippines or Guam or Australia and the Chinese blew it up and killed hundreds of US airmen, how short is the escalatory ladder from that to the US and Allies returning the favor on any Chinese military installation?
For theatre/tactical performance, again early Kinzhal was functionally ballistic and interception rate was ~25%, dropped to 6% when RU added some terminal maneuvering. So US has not only not caught up to ABM defense outside of North Korea tier threats, ABM defense currently on trend to lose the physics race (against capable adversaries). There are fundamental physical reason high end hypersonics will likely only extend the interception gap. The TLDR is terminal speed past mach 6+, the intercept window compresses so much it becomes almost mechanically impossible for interceptors, i.e. g-load on interceptors will physically break them apart. Kinzhal (which US/PRC categorize as ballistic tier) terminal is ~mach4, PRC DFs (US categorize as proper hypersonic) are estimated to sustain mach 5-10, i.e. high machs until final seconds, basically physically impossible engagement envelopes. DEW doesn't have dwell time vs hypersonic already shielded against plasma sheath. Current golden shield bet is on glide phase interceptors, which doesn't really answer magazine math, i.e. multiple expensive interceptors (especially midcourse) is going to lose the attrition game regardless, maybe not vs smaller adversaries, but vs PRC. Extra lopsided in context of naval defense with limited magazine depth where it's not even about $$$ but inability to defend against saturation.
But they looked really cool.
Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships. Being near a hostile coast held by someone with modern weapons is death to a navy today. The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones.
[1] https://hmshood.org.uk/history/bcorigins.htm
[2] https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/china-s-df-27-miss...
It’s geriatric hype. It tells you how the administration is thinking about the Navy. It’s in terms someone born in the 1940s can understand.
What we should have are floating, automated drone-production platforms that can be mass manufactured themselves and shipped to right ahead of the front for overwhelming the enemy’s sea-based defences (while F-35s take care of SEAD). Instead we get Popeye with a rail gun.
At the time I found this an interesting comparison to the UK. In the UK my mother's generation (squarely in that same bracket) voted in Margaret Thatcher†, the "Iron Lady" and so they know a woman is no different from a man in terms of potential to lead. Which doesn't mean (see Liz Truss) better but also doesn't mean worse.
So in the UK you could definitely put a strong female leader at the top of the ticket and expect to get the same response, and in the US that seems likely in the future but it certainly counted against Clinton and even in 2028 it's probably a bad bet (assuming that is, that the US holds a meaningful presidential election in 2028)
† Thatcher isn't much liked, especially in some parts of the UK, but nobody is fooling themselves by thinking she was incompetent or ineffectual, they mostly thought she was bad which is different.
Nikki Haley did very well in the primary against a more well known Ron DeSantis & Chris Christie. We have had multiple governors.
The only 2 that have run are not a good example.
A lot of people had strong opinions on Hillary that had nothing to do with her politics or leadership. A lot didn't want another 4-8 years of Clinton/Bush after 28 years depending on how you count Bush Sr. You could even add another 4 to that for Hillary's 4 yrs of influence as Secretary of State.
Harris wasn't popular in the primaries, many thought she wasn't deserving of the VP & she was part of an unpopular White House that was given a few ticking time bombs that they didn't properly diffuse. They also failed miserably to communicate with the public.
Both races were pretty close despite this.
Also, I can tell you first hand that heartland, salt of the earth, common clay of the new west Republicans, the worst of the worst from democrats’ perspectives, loved Palin. Looooved her. She’d have done better among them than McCain. That’s among hardcore republicans. How the shit am I supposed to believe Hillary and Kamala being women is the reason they lost, given that?
I think the “lesson” of “well a woman just can’t win yet” is simply ignorant. It doesn’t fit what we’ve actually seen.
Or, as you said, had the Republicans put up Palin, I think the world would look veery different today. I don't think there would've been as much of an appetite for the populist trump nonsense today.
But it's all essentially naval gazing.
Well, they would have a good reason to feel that, because Debbie Wasserman Schulz basically engineered it that way as head of the DNC, and what do you know, less than 24 hours after leaving that position was the head of Clinton's campaign.
There was no way the DNC leadership was going with Bernie, and leaked emails later confirmed that - they just said fuck you to their membership's preferences.
> Had Harris had more time
Not coincidentally, number one Google search on Election Day?
"Did Biden drop out?"
Very informed electorate...
I see what you did, there…
And Hillary Clinton did get more of the popular vote—not that it actually matters in America's cockamamie system: not enough votes were in the "correct" places.
The popular vote is basically split evenly today (the usual talking point, 2016, was 62,984,828 Trump, 65,853,514 Clinton). 2020 and 2024 had similarly small-ish margins.
So take 2016: if we’d had a normal election cycle, and then the day after voting said “hey guys let’s do this based on the popular vote!”, Clinton would have won. But that’s not how it would be; both sides would know of this change for at least the full election cycle.
So now you start with a roughly 50/50 split country, with many Democrat votes coming from big cities and many Republican votes from Middle Of Nowhere, Kansas.
You win the upcoming election by gaining votes.
Republicans go energize the voters in New York, LA, SF, Seattle, Austin, etc, who are not voting today because they (correctly) know their vote doesn’t matter. They maybe change some bit of their platform to appeal more the big city voters. They can pick up millions of votes in relatively few places.
Democrats have to go win votes from Middle Of Nowhere, Kansas. Or more accurately, 500 small towns in Kansas, to pick up a few hundred thousand votes. There isn’t nearly as much of a depressed Dem vote in red states, simply because red states are smaller. It’s an exponentially harder problem. While Democrats are trying to convince Uncle Rupert that FOX is lying to him, Republicans are filling Madison Square Garden in NYC with closeted Republicans and telling them their vote will count for the first time ever.
I just don’t see how abolishing the electoral college doesn’t backfire on Democrats. How wrong am I?
Some 65% of the population voted last time. A popular vote policy would activate a lot of non-voters who suddenly felt like their voice could have an impact on the result. How that would shake up, I am not sure. I have heard that most republican voters are already participating, there are significantly more democrats who stay home.
At my neighborhood polling place, poll watchers (including local professors, blue collar neighbors, and even occasional UN election observers) volunteer to quietly monitor the election process, verifying that no registered voter is rejected or harassed. With a day off work, any citizen can audit their precinct to verify that end-of-day machine totals match the state's certified results, and could alert the news of any discrepancy. Any motivated citizen can trace their vote's impact up to the state level.
This matters because the Electoral College locks in your vote at the state level by using it to secure electoral college votes. Should fraud occur in some far away state, the Electoral College prevents it from numerically overturning the electoral college votes your state has secured. This federated system is more resilient against local failures.
By contrast, adopting a nationwide popular vote means that votes don't count until they're tallied at the national level. At the national level, a firmware flaw in a poll machine in Hawaii, or a lazy Secretary of State in Arkansas can cause the system to accept fraudulent votes that numerically overwhelm the national tally without ever presenting itself in a way I could observe or report. Without the Electoral College, Democracy loses a lot of its "go see for yourself" and becomes too much "just trust us."
At my neighborhood polling place, poll watchers (including local professors, blue collar neighbors, and even occasional UN election observers) volunteer to quietly monitor the election process, verifying that no registered voter is rejected or harassed. With a day off work, any citizen can audit their precinct to verify that end-of-day machine totals match the state's certified results, and could alert the news of any discrepancy. Any motivated citizen can trace their vote's impact up to the state level.
This matters because the Electoral College locks in your vote at the state level by using it to secure electoral college votes. Should fraud occur in some far away state, the Electoral College prevents it from numerically overturning the electoral college votes your state has secured. This federated system is more resilient against local failures.
By contrast, adopting a nationwide popular vote means that votes don't count until they're tallied at the national level. At the national level, a firmware flaw in a poll machine in Hawaii, or a lazy Secretary of State in Arkansas can cause the system to accept fraudulent votes that numerically overwhelm the national tally without ever presenting itself in a way I could observe or report. Without the Electoral College, Democracy loses a lot of its "go see for yourself" and becomes too much "just trust us."
The Electoral College is a bigger source of voter demoralization than anything that exists in any modern representative democracy which doesn't have the Electoral College. (FPTP by itself is bad, but even other systems have FPTP, don't have nearly the degree and persistence of voter demoralization seen in the US.)
Like, I can see how one might utter this sentence in an alternate universe where the US was the only approximation of representative democracy that ever existed and where every commentary was purely theoretical with no concrete comparisons to make, but in the actual world we live in, where there are plenty of concrete alternatives and whole bodies of comparative study, it is beyond ridiculous.
Margaret Thatcher does not dispel that somewhat hackneyed notion. Nor do the last two women Democrats in the U.S. that ran.
Or in the case of Clinton, the party used undemocratic means to counter a political groundswell for a candidate they didn’t like, triggering an apathetic exit and no turnout for the most important voting bloc.
Most critically, the party seems utterly incapable of learning from these mistakes, and only doubles down on the worst decisions in the next election.
So you're saying the playfield was even. And the man still won.
Surely this wasn't what the Greeks intended when they invented democracy.
The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so. Which is a massive advantage because it means if a ship is targeted it can still potentially service every single target in range before it's in any danger of actually being hit.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_ship
There's a minimum tonnage needed to mount a big enough radar, have a hanger for a helicopter, and plenty of room for VLS, RAM, etc.
But past that, it's better to distribute your assets across multiple vessels vs building one dramatically larger group.
It's far better to have 4x Arleigh Burke style ships than one behemoth that's 4x the tonnage.
Also, conceiving of this in terms of single platforms is also just totally wrong. We assemble surface action groups with a mix of capabilities that match the situation. Some of our Burkes focus on anti aircraft warfare, other's anti submarine, so we send a mix. And when they're on station each hull can be in the location best suited to its task.
So really you have to think about the whole package, and the arsenal ship just doesn't offer anything desirable on that basis.
And then it has to go back to base to reload. Reloading at sea is marginally possible. The U.S. Navy has demonstrated it recently, in harbor. But it's not done routinely with live ammo yet. This is a known weak point.
It would still involve putting two or more ships in close proximity with heavy lift equipment for an extended time.
If this is close to the front it's a target, if it's not then you could reload VLS cells, and to do it your sacrificing the ability to put munitions on targets quickly which might just cost you the entire ship.
It's not even clear it saves you any reload time, since the only potential benefit is that shells are somewhat smaller then missiles, and even then once you account for magazine design and survivability I'd say the trade off is questionable at best.
VLS requires that you reload missile by missile at the place they’re fired from the top, which requires you have crane access to each VLS cell. You could replace the many non-reloadable tubes with fewer, reloadable tubes connected via loaders to magazines… but we’re starting down the path to re-inventing guns.
And again, you're paying for all of this in the form of far slower firing guns with less range and precision.
We’re also not debating a return to old guns — but to a modern version using autoloaders and shells equipped with guidance and range extension, to around 100km using modern techniques. Using barrages of all barrels, it’s closer to firing off waves of ~45 missiles at targets 100km away (9 guns, 5 rounds per minute burst).
The real difference is a battleship carries 1200 rounds instead of 120 — and can replenish those rounds at sea. We gain that increased storage and endurance for decreased burst capacity, but remain over 45/min; excluding the VLS systems (which a modern battleship would also have).
https://acoup.blog/2022/05/06/collections-when-is-a-tank-not...
Less humorously, the proposed Trump class "Battleship" is what a teenage armchair general would dream up. The kind of person who thinks Ministry of War sounds cool and cosplays as his favourite operator.
From what I have read and heard, they are much better at destroying existing functional structures than building functional things.
Here's my sketch idea: Naval officers unveil the ship, but when they pull the curtains, they murmur that it's smaller than claimed (The ships will be bigger, faster and a hundred times more powerful than any previous US-built warship, according to Trump(1)). Stormy Daniels shows up and says "Oh yeah, he likes to brag, but it's more like a mushroom.".
Cut to the bridge of the ship, the navigation officer comes to the Captain and says "Sir, the ship can't navigate properly. It seems whatever coordinates we set it always wants to head to... Epstein Island!"
Then the radar officer says "Sir, we are picking up something on the radar. It's a big, it's long...". Cut to footage of a big, black, submarine. The Captain interrupts with "That must be the Obama-Class submarine! The biggest, baddest ship we've ever had!", and the crew look at it in awe.
Then Obama shows up and lectures the viewing public: "Impressive, huh? But in reality there's no Obama-class submarine. The legacy of leading the country should be measured by how it improved Americans' lives, not by the ships and ballrooms." (this message needs to be workshopped...)
Stormy Daniels reappears and says "I know which ship I'd rather be on (wink).". Then fade out the scene with the crew panickedly saying "Captain, the ship is losing power! It looks like it's falling asleep!".
(1) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/22/trump-new-na...
- The Dictator
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