President Trump wants to bring back the battleship:
US President Donald Trump suggested that he’s considering bringing back US Navy battleships, vessels that were retired decades ago, long after the kind of naval combat they were built for had become a thing of the past.
Battleships were heavily armed naval powerhouses built to slug it out with other warships. During the World Wars, they dominated the seas, but by the end of the Cold War, these once mighty warships were completely obsolete.
Speaking at a high-profile summit with top US military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on Tuesday morning, Trump said battleships are on the table.
“It’s something we’re actually considering,” he said, “the concept of battleship, nice six-inch side, solid steel, not aluminum, aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it. Starts melting as the missile’s about two miles away. No, those ships, they don’t make them that way anymore.”
T”I look at those ships, they came with the destroyers alongside of them, and man, nothing was gonna stop them,” he said. “Some people would say, ‘No, that’s old technology,’ I don’t know, I don’t think it’s old technology when you look at those guns.”
I can only assume this is some sort of joke. Battleships have been outdated and little more than floating targets since 1941 at the absolute latest. The aircraft carriers that replaced them are already outdated. But instead of seeking to catch up on the hypersonic missile technology that has rendered traditional sea and air war alike irrelevant, Trump wants to go back to pre-WWI gunboat diplomacy.