March 5, 2026: The United States recently experienced a short period of excitement and surprise about a presidential plan to build a new class of battleships. For various practical reasons the battleship plan was quietly laid to rest. The battleship was a 20 ^th century development with 177 built and put into service by the major naval powers. The U.S. Navy completed 59 battleships by the end of World War II in 1945. Great Britain built 43, Germany 23, Japan 14, France 17, Italy 9, Austria-Hungary 4, and Russia 8.

Battleships went out of fashion after World War II. The modern battleship rapidly evolved in the decade before the 1914-18 World War I and, early in the 20th century, some weighed as much as the Zumwalt. Battleship design rapidly evolved through 1945 to the point where the last ones weighed as much as modern carriers. A few battleships continued to serve after World War II but no more were built. These huge vessels had outlived their usefulness, and nothing really replaced them. By the 1950s, missiles were equipping destroyers, cruisers, submarines and aircraft carriers.

Radical new warship designs are rare and many fail for technical or financial reasons. Such was the fate of the radical new Seawolf SSN/ nuclear attack sub. Designed at the end of the Cold War; there were to be 29 of these huge boats. But when the Cold War ended in 1991, so did the mighty Soviet Navy the Seawolf was designed to deal with. So only three Seawolf’s were built, in part because there were cheaper post-Cold War alternatives like the Virginia class SSNs. A similar fate befell DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyers, which began life as a 1990s effort to design a new destroyer for the 21^st century. That meant lots of expensive new technology, some of it not really invented yet. Like the Seawolf the DDG-1000 proved too expensive and the orders were cut to three.

It was ironic that a century before the DDG 1000 showed up there was the Mississippi class battleship that displaced 14,400 tons, was 116.5 meters long, and 23.5 meters wide. A crew of 800 operated a variety of weapons, including four 12 inch, eight 8 inch, eight 7 inch, twelve 3 inch, twelve 47mm, and four 37mm guns, plus four 7.62mm machine-guns. There were also four torpedo tubes. The Mississippi had a top speed of 31 kilometers an hour, versus 54 for DDG-1000. But the Mississippi had one thing DD-21 lacked, armor. Along the side there was a belt of 23 cm armor, and the main turrets had 30 cm thick armor. The Mississippi had radio, but the DDG-1000 had radio, GPS, sonar, Aegis radar, electronic warfare equipment, and the ability to shoot down ballistic missiles. The century old Mississippi class ships cost about half a billion dollars (adjusted for inflation). The DDG-1000 class destroyers cost over $4 billion each, thus possessing the price, size, and firepower, if not the name, of a battleship. The U.S. Navy could no longer afford battleships and, given its continued inability to control costs, the navy could not afford enough of its new DDG-1000 destroyers either. Many senior navy officers are aware that the way warships are procured has changed in the last century, and apparently not for the better. Many other nations do not have the procurement problems the U.S. Navy is suffering from. But attempts to fix the procurement mess constantly run into political opposition.

By 2025 the Zumwalts finally found a useful purpose, as a launch platform for long range two stage Hypersonic Strike Missiles that can hit a target anywhere in the world in less than an hour. Zumwalts carry twenty of these missiles as well as 80 VLS cells for anti-ship, anti-submarine or land-attack missiles.

Another aspect of all this is how, since World War II, the descriptions given to warships have evolved. Warships called destroyers appeared a century ago and by the end of World War I they were ships of about 1,000 tons armed with a few guns and some torpedoes and depth charges. By World War II, destroyers had grown to about 3,000 tons. There were also cruisers, weighing in at between 6,000 and 12,000 tons, and battleships, which were 30-60,000 tons. Half a century later, all that's left for surface warfare are destroyers and frigates. For whatever reason, the modern frigates perform the same mission and are about the same size as the World War II destroyers.

Meanwhile the modern destroyers have grown to the size of World War II cruisers. Actually, some of the larger destroyers are called cruisers, even though they are only 10-20 percent heavier than the largest destroyers. The latest ships in the U.S. Navy's Burke class destroyers weigh 9,200 tons, cost $1.5 billion to build, have a crew of about 330 sailors, and carry 96 anti-aircraft and cruise missiles. There's only one 5 inch gun, but two helicopters. These modern destroyers could take on any World War II cruiser and win, mainly because the cruise missiles have a range of 1,500 kilometers. A Burke class ship could probably defeat a World War II battleship, although we'll never know for sure since one of those heavily armored ships never got hit by a modern cruise missile. In effect, the U.S. Navy has settled on just four major combat ship types; aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates and nuclear submarines.