Trump’s Big, Beautiful Battleship Is a Sitting Duck

Even before using a US Navy armada to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump had big ideas to remake the service in his image. At a glitzy Mar-a-Lago rollout last month, he announced a new “Trump class” of battleships, ostensibly to lead a 21st-century “Golden Fleet.” Is this bold — and very expensive — vision the right approach for dominating the high seas?

While the overall class of warships would be named for the president, the first hull would not bear his name (perhaps because he would prefer a future nuclear aircraft carrier to be the USS Donald J. Trump). Thus BBG-1 — the acronym for a battleship is “BB” and the “G” connotes the ability to launch guided missiles — is to be USS Defiant.