I tend to agree with 81542's comment re. the terminology of "battleship" to describe the new class of warship that Pres. Trump has announced. I am an adherent of the traditional & classical school of thinking in that a BATTLESHIP is heavily armored, heavily GUNNED major warship as we are generally familiar with (esp. on this forum).
Here is a rendering w/callouts of the proposed USS DEFIANT as published by USNI this morning (courtesy of Naval Sea Systems Command) -
USS DEFIANT.jpg
If I were to define this vessel, I would call it a Heavy Missile Cruiser rather than anything else. Since nothing was mentioned regarding either the hull or superstructure being armored (and there may well be armored areas that aren't being publically discussed), it certainly (IMHO) would not meet the above accepted definition of BATTLESHIP. With all the problems and backlogs that U.S. shipyards are having today simply producing one ship of this class may take quite a while, if ever.
I do, however, applaud the administration for it's willingness to be open to new ideas/changes, etc. regarding modernization of the US Naval fleet in light of past administrations simply either ignoring needed modernization & upgrades and failing to remedy existing design/cost/shipbuilding problems.
I think that the various battleship museum curators can breathe a sigh of relief as their main artifact isn't going anywhere!
I tend to agree with 81542's comment re. the terminology of "battleship" to describe the new class of warship that Pres. Trump has announced. I am an adherent of the traditional & classical school of thinking in that a BATTLESHIP is heavily armored, heavily GUNNED major warship as we are generally familiar with (esp. on this forum).
Here is a rendering w/callouts of the proposed USS DEFIANT as published by USNI this morning (courtesy of Naval Sea Systems Command) -
[attachment=0]USS DEFIANT.jpg[/attachment]
If I were to define this vessel, I would call it a Heavy Missile Cruiser rather than anything else. Since nothing was mentioned regarding either the hull or superstructure being armored (and there may well be armored areas that aren't being publically discussed), it certainly (IMHO) would not meet the above accepted definition of BATTLESHIP. With all the problems and backlogs that U.S. shipyards are having today simply producing one ship of this class may take quite a while, if ever.
I do, however, applaud the administration for it's willingness to be open to new ideas/changes, etc. regarding modernization of the US Naval fleet in light of past administrations simply either ignoring needed modernization & upgrades and failing to remedy existing design/cost/shipbuilding problems.
I think that the various battleship museum curators can breathe a sigh of relief as their main artifact isn't going anywhere!