Hypersonic missiles, lasers, and railguns redefine naval power. The US Navy's Trump-class warships blend battleship might with destroyer agility and advanced drone capabilities.
By Kris Osborn, Warrior
Surface fired hypersonic missiles, 600kw lasers, high-velocity rounds and a 32 Megajoule Railgun are a few of the weapons systems expected to be built into the Trump Battleships, a new class of warships intended to blend battleship firepower, with destroyer-like weapons and a carrier and amphib-like ability to launch helicopters and possibly even some fixed-wing aircraft.
Lasers, Railguns, Hypersonics
Early conceptual renderings of the Trump-class were placed on display at the recent Surface Navy Association symposium where senior Navy leaders and weapons developers detailed some of weapons, concepts and technologies being planned for the warships. The emerging consensus involves much more of a modern blending of attributes to include innovations planned for the service’s DDG(X) next-generation destroyer program. The Trump-class will be armed with 128 Mk-41 Vertical Launch Systems which can fire SM-3s, SM-6s and Tomahawk cruise missiles. The ships will be large, second only in length to aircraft carriers, in part because senior planners wanted to make sure the warships can be armed with an entire sphere of weapons to include VLS, deck-mounted guns, hypersonics, lasers and railguns.
The thinking with the Trump class is far more complex and nuanced than a simple effort to revive WWII-era Battleships; Navy leaders recently clarified something which could easily have been misunderstood, which is that while the emerging Trump-class warships may be called “Battleships,” they are intended to serve as modern, extremely high-tech, lethal warships with next-generation weapons, layered ship defenses and advanced command and control technologies. While they may re-introduce classic levels of WWII firepower, the Trump-class will be armed with hypersonic missiles, lasers and railguns. Its guns will likely operate with an ability to “blanket” targets with rounds as an “area” weapon, yet also fire modern, precision-guided rounds with greater range, lethality and guidance technology. Given the size of the ships, they will undoubtedly be engineered with advanced layered ship defenses to include interceptor missiles, EW, laser defenses, submarine-tracking sonar and closer in defenses such as the Rolling Airframe Missile, SeaRAM and Close-in-Weapons System.
Modern Guns
WWII-era guns, a 5-inch guns built onto destroyers were “dumb” rounds capable of unleashing massive amounts of ship-to-shore bombardment, and while “mass” fires will likely be possible with the Trump-class, the ships will undoubtedly be armed with new-generations of “precision-guided” weaponry designed for long-range highly targeted strikes. The weapons integrated into the Trump-class warships will likely be enabled by networked sensors, multi-domain datalinks, course-correcting guidance technologies and joint-interoperability. Firing precision rounds from deck-mounted 5-inch guns has been on the Navy’s radar for years, as various innovations now enable classic weapons to fire three times the range and incorporate paradigm-changing levels of precision.
Not a WWII Battleship
This point was clearly articulated recently at the Navy’s Surface Navy Association Symposium where senior Navy weapons developers made critical distinctions between the antiquated concepts of a WWII battleship and the intent for a new-generation of warships. Rear. Adm. Derek Trinque, the U.S. Navy Director of Surface Warfare, articulated that the planned technologies, weapons and concepts of operation for the Trump-class are entirely different from what was regarded as the operational scope of classic WWII battleships.
“Battleships are obsolete. This is not us blowing the dust off the design of the Montana-class, which was to be a successor to the Iowa-class at the end of World War 2, and then we won World War 2, we didn’t need the Montana-class. It’s true we don;t need that class. This is a ship we do need,” Trinque said at SNA, as cited in Naval News
The Trump-class could grow as large as 15-to-25 ships, depending upon the extent to which the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base can “flex” to accommodate demand.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University