30 Years After the Navy Retired Its Last Battleship, President Trump Wants to Build Them Again

One of America’s last battleships, USS Wisconsin, is moored on the Elizabeth River in Norfolk, Virginia.

Now a floating museum, the ship’s most recent battle was winning Good Morning America’s Great Christmas Light Fight this past holiday season.

Retired Warrant Officer David Woods gives a tour of the USS Wisconsin, a World War II era battleship that is now a floating museum in Norfolk, Virginia. (Photo by Steve Walsh/WHRO)

USS Wisconsin was still decked out in lights when David Woods recently gave a tour of the historic ship. A retired warrant officer, Woods spent 30 years in naval aviation, often working on aircraft carriers.

He said the Wisconsin – one of four Iowa-Class battleships that entered service in the final months of World War II – is still intact enough that it can technically be recalled back into service.

“The little stipulation we have with the Navy: There are certain things we can’t do to the ship as a museum, because they have to be able to take the ship back and undo everything we did within like two or three weeks,” Woods said.

USS Wisconsin came into service in 1944. It was revived briefly during the Reagan defense buildup in the 1980s, then decommissioned again in the early 1990s after its 16-inch guns were used for shore bombardment in the first Gulf War.

Its 13-inch steel hull is thick enough to withstand a modern Tomahawk cruise missile. But operating it would cost nearly $1 million a day just in fuel. With its dials and analog firing systems, the ship would also require a complete retrofit.

Woods said the Wisconsin and other battleships of its era are probably no longer the ships the Navy needs.

“I would volunteer to come out of retirement in a heartbeat to serve on one of them,” he said. “But in modern warfare and feasibility-wise, they’re just obsolete, unfortunately.”

Battleships haven’t been part of the Navy’s arsenal since the World War II era ships were finally retired. The Navy now relies mainly on smaller, more versatile destroyers.

“Today’s ships have to be multi-functional,” Woods said. “A battleship is a bowie knife; a destroyer is a Swiss army knife.”

President Donald Trump announced plans in December to revive the battleship concept and build as many as 20 – 25 new battleships as part of what he’s calling the “Golden Fleet.”

Following Trump’s announcement, the Navy put on hold its plans for a new, more powerful destroyer. Instead, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle embraced Trump’s vision.

“Battleships will anchor maritime fires and sea control in the most contested environments, massing durable combat power and absorbing punishment and adversary cannot match,” Caudle said in January at the Annual Surface Navy Association National Symposium in Arlington, Virginia.

During the conference, the Congressional Budget Office released an estimate that the first ship could cost as much as $22 billion, while follow-ups could cost between $10 to $15 billion.

That would rival the cost of the larger Ford-Class aircraft carriers. USS Gerald F. Ford cost roughly $13 billion after cost overruns and delays.

The design concept of the new ship, which was unveiled during a Trump press conference, has been pulled from the Internet. But the battleship was more than double the length of current destroyers and needed almost three times the crew. It included a number of weapons systems that aren’t in production.

A graphic that briefly appeared on the U.S. Navy website shows a design concept of a new battleship proposed by President Trump. (Courtesy of U.S. Navy)

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, expressed concern about the design’s complexity.

He noted it’s one thing to say the Navy needs a larger ship, which could launch more missiles.

“It’s another thing to say, ‘I need to have a laser on it, I need to have a rail gun on it, and other systems that don’t exist yet and that are going to be too complex to introduce all into one platform without creating a massive increase in cost and schedule,’” he said.

In 2021, the Navy dropped plans for railguns, which fire metal bolts rather than shells, when the program failed to produce a consistently working model.

The Navy has a history of stopping ship production when delays pile up and costs get out of hand. It ended the Zumwalt class of destroyers after three ships. And the Trump Administration just ended production of the Constellation-class frigate after the first two ships.

A new battleship could be the costliest U-turn in Navy history.

“If they end up abandoning it, now you’ve got these orphan ships that have a lot of unique capabilities that will be difficult to maintain on that small scale,” Clark said.

Ultimately, Congress will have a say on whether the battleships are built. Even if lawmakers approve the plan, the U.S. won’t roll out its first battleship since 1944 for at least a decade, Clark said.

This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans.

 

By Steve Walsh/WHRO

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