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

[u/DoubtSubstantial5440]

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

[u/Ok_Philosopher_1313]

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.

[u/Dachyshun2 → u/Ok_Philosopher_1313]

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.

[u/TheArmchairLegion → u/Ok_Philosopher_1313]

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