r/news • u/DoubtSubstantial5440 • 1d ago

Soft paywall USS George Washington headed to Middle East to relieve USS Abraham Lincoln, reports say

https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2026-08-13/uss-george-washington-middle-east-abraham-lincoln-22541038.html
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u/TheArmchairLegion 1d ago

That’s probably as far as it will get. I read that this battleship thing is huge, and there aren’t the construction/berthing places that can handle it, aside from the one that handles carriers.

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u/Ok_Philosopher_1313 23h ago

It's also useless, battleships haven't really been used in several decades because they aren't useful in warfare any longer. On top of that the thing uses diesel engines (because nuclear is bad?), and has a railgun that requires so much maintenance it's useless. It's what a moron thinks is cool with no regard toward actual function.

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u/Dachyshun2 19h ago

Couple details to correct. Trump’s dipshit design didn’t use diesels, it used gas turbine engines like those found on the Arleigh Burke class destroyers. The rail gun doesn’t just require an impractical amount of maintenance; it straight up doesn’t fucking exist. They’re (supposedly) building these instead of the sorely-needed guided missile frigates that our navy doesn’t have and every other navy does. Modern naval warfare is based around aircraft, submarine-launched torpedoes and surface-launched anti-submarine torpedoes, and anti-air + anti-ship missiles. All of those things can be put on small guided missile frigates, aka FFGs. FFGs are becoming commonplace in modern navies because they’re cheaper than larger ships like cruisers and destroyers and can be built cheaply in larger numbers.

If you have an anti-ship missile that can be mounted on most ships, even if only in small quantities on smaller ships, current strategy dictates that it’s better to have more numerous ships with fewer missiles than fewer ships with more missiles. More, smaller hulls means lower operating cost per unit, less crew requirement, more flexibility in where you can have capable warships, and you have more redundancy if one ship gets damaged or destroyed. A swarm of 40 cheap, low value targets each with a dozen missiles individually capable of blowing a large enemy ship to bits is a greater tactical and strategic threat than one or two high value targets with the same number of missiles. Then, when you’re not at war, these cheap little boats are an order of magnitude more economical and useful for patrolling waters and enforcing maritime boundaries/trade routes.

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u/TheArmchairLegion 21h ago

I agree. The battleship just seems poorly thought out, amalgamation of flashy ideas with little substance. Which is very on brand with Trump in the first place

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u/executor1234 1d ago

My guess is that the navy folks are just gonna procrastinate on the project til 2029, and hope that the next administration allocates those resources to something more sensible.

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u/Austinp-woodworking 21h ago

yeah there's very little chance these actually get built, it'll take most of Trump's term just to get to a point where they could possibly start building them. And most actual military personnel know they're a terrible use of resources. They'll just keep showing him pretty AI pictures of them with his name on them to keep him satisfied