"best-looking warship anywhere"?

https://news.usni.org/2025/12/22/tr...l-be-largest-u-s-surface-combatant-since-wwii

 

80 years of prepping for the last war....

Listened to a very interesting talk on how the human brain looses the capacity for forward time horizon as a coping mechanism to face death. Looking at the last 25 years of my country's politics.. defense spending has been deficit funded, poorly designed for poorly defined roles vessels. A large surface ship in the age of drones seems utterly pointless... its not 1991 anymore.

Fingers crossed as the generation that takes power can define a less bothersome foreign policy and better uses of funds to back a more coherent realistic navy. Although the gen z European leaders appear as detached as the 80 year olds who have been leading this country.

Big beautiful targets... in a drone world.

Some zip codes going to get an economic bump, some senators somewhere going to get some hefty kick backs. If the last 20 years of procurement are any indicator, they are gonna have to be built in China to be on time and on budget.

Gen z has some fight in them, maybe they break the absurdity... although they might be a bit to rambunctious.

 

80 years of prepping for the last war.... Shrug..; wet dreams from a character who's said to have avoided doing his milservice but wants to be a toughguy, pathetic!

 

Its bi partisan sadly. Meet the new octegenarian megalomaniac... same as the old octagenarian megalomamiac.

It is odd that in a world where we can all see the horror of drone warfare, that they can pass off any form of large capital ship.

Between the cost and the houthi drone threat the US had to move several carriers a few months back. By all accounts there will be hypersonic missles widely adopted before any u.s. program gets much more than a keel layed. Meaning whatever the cost it will be immediately negated.

How many billion (or trillion) was the last us navy acquisition over budget?

Going to be interesting watching drone and missle technology be the great equalizer. Hate to be on the first capital ship that gets sent down from what amounts to a flying/floating ied.

 

Not to worry, he'll cancel it next week.
Then reinstate it later only to cancel it after it's started.
"Talk's cheap until you get the bill."

 

FWIW, the only good thing I can see about this vessel is that it will fit in existing 1914 PANAMAX drydocks which immediately more than doubles the US drydocks it will fit into. Other than that...not very good...a lot like the arsenal ship from the mid 1980's-1990's.

 

Or the cavalry in WWI

 

My guess is that a breakthrough in Laser Technology is close, and if it is successful to at least an intermediate range, it might essentially invalidate kinetic energy based weapons. Hypersonic has to be extremely expensive probably several million dollars per unit, whereas one shot from a laser which is likely fast enough to knock it out is maybe just a few dollars. Lasers may also be fast enough to knock out a swarm of drones. So my guess would be that any new ships should be nuclear powered to have sufficient energy to power an on board laser defense, otherwise they would be sitting ducks as has been pointed out.

 

Kinetic and drone intercept lasers have been fielded for almost a decade now (well before Rafael's "Iron Beam") but, for naval use, there are still operational atmospheric and maneuver target issues that can only partially be surmounted. Additionally these things are power hogs, which is why this ship needs to be so big....just to power itself.

https://asc.army.mil/web/news-army-...mortars-artillery-drones-and-cruise-missiles/
High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Energy_Laser_with_Integrated_Optical-dazzler_and_Surveillance
Northrop Grumman “on track to deliver 1 megawatt laser to the DoD” – Unmanned airspace https://www.unmannedairspace.info/counter-uas-systems-and-policies/northrop-grumman-on-track-to-deliver-1-megawatt-laser-to-the-dod/

 

Somewhere, someone working on drone ship attack tech is cracking a cold one and laughing aloud.

Warfare is changing and we are seeing it. Launching drones from submarines seems crafty.

Otherwise, as the guy says.

It’s a huge (target).

 

Everything is a big fat target, that's the nature of warfare. Expecting everything to survive is not realistic, what counts is fulfilling the objective with minimal losses. Unless the US has a massive change of policy its navy is going to still need surface ships in the future. Those ships will need to get bigger, the existing frigates can't hold enough armament and armor to counteract drone swarms. In theory they could be retrofitted to be able to defend themselves, but a warship also needs to defend others, a super close range protection system isn't enough.

Is the proposed vessel the answer? Well, it depends on what they actually end up building. As outlined in the linked description there is a conspicuous lack of details about its defensive capabilities against all kind of drones. There's also a lack of details about providing it's own air cover and long range detection capabilities. This doesn't mean the ship won't have them, otherwise it will indeed be just as helpless as Prince of Wales and Repulse were back in 1941.
I think the navy saw the opportunity of increased funding and quickly outlined a sketch of a vessel to open the purses strings, leaving the important details out of the picture to be ironed out at a later date. The class could be a success or a flop, but that's not evident from what is publicly known now.
Weapon systems are built to fit a doctrine, and we can argue about the doctrine beeing right or wrong. One thing to keep in mind is that the situation in Ukraine and the Black Sea isn't really relevant for the US Navy, it operates under different parameters and in other conditions.

 

Historically systems get too big and cumbersome to defend. The mounted knights got defeated by muskets. The stone forts with modern projectiles. Cavalry charges by machine guns. Big and slow bombers by missiles. And so it goes, bigger is not always better.

 

In modern history, the US navy has found its success in fighting essentially small undeveloped states. Doctrine certainly matters.... as there hasn't been something passable as a success since 1950. The houthi drones while not plastered all over the media was a non trivial reason our carrier task force had so many issues last year. Thats a country with less manufacturing capacity and resources than your average jr. College engineering team. Scale that to larger powers and it doesnt bode well.

The Ukraine war is relevant in regards to what it reminds us of the nature of war, namely at the end of the day its economies at scale and manpower. Australian Abrams lasted what 6 days off the boat, millions taken out by thousands. While the next conflict might not be exactly the same, it clearly shows us the direction.

Only thing I'm certain of, is that in my lifetime we overspend on things useful in the last conflict but not needed in the next. The defense budget goes up, whole states become reliant on the largess and its one giant resource suck thats essentially a self licking ice cream cone. Probably not going to change until we get our collective butts handed to us and we require leadership to get better or go.

I fully agree this was a play for funding, kinda surprising that they couldn't be bothered for a rendering that looked more current than 2001. If were going to spend money on a ship as poorly done as the last dozen, to fight a war thats probably not needed, at a cost thats usually double the initial budget.... at least give us a decent rendering.

 

Iron Beam laser defense system delivered to IDF https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-iron-beam-laser-defense-system-delivered-to-idf-1001530441
Not a stand alone system at this time...

 

On the other hand, Reagan's Star Wars bluff bankrupted the Soviet Union. Wars are often won by bigger budgets and not necessarily good strategy.