Trump's 'childlike' plan for new ships named after him 'makes no sense': Navy expert

One longtime U.S. Navy expert is loudly denouncing President Donald Trump's plan to building new "Trump-class" Navy vessels carrying nuclear weapons.

In a Monday essay for The Atlantic, Tom Nichols – a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College — scoffed at Trump's announcement, and argued that the vessels he wants to build are already considered obsolete by modern military standards. He noted that neither Trump nor Navy Secretary John Phelan (an investor who has no experience in the Navy) appeared to understand what a 21st-century Navy truly needs.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the new "Trump-class" frigates are the proposed replacement for the Arleigh-Burke class destroyers, whose appearance Trump has repeatedly maligned. Nichols noted that Trump is incorrect in calling them "battleships," as destroyers and frigates are much smaller than actual battleships.

"Destroyers and frigates are less rugged, and perform missions that require more speed and agility than battleships can muster," he wrote. "But none of that matters: The goal, apparently, was to give a childlike president a new toy, named after himself, in exchange for gobs of money that the Navy will figure out how to spend later."

Nichols also heaped criticism on the president for "revers[ing] more than 30 years of wise policy by putting nuclear weapons back on U.S. Navy surface vessels." The former Naval War College professor observed that having nuclear weapons on surface vessels (rather than submarines) was "not only strategically pointless but a needless risk."

"[L]ike everything else about this chaotic scheme, putting nuclear arms on destroyers, or cruisers, or 'battleships' makes no sense in the 21st century — if it ever did," Nichols wrote. "... In 1991, with the Soviet Union on its last legs, President George H. W. Bush ordered the removal of all such weapons from the surface fleet. Many Navy officers were relieved: I know from speaking with several at the time that they regarded nuclear weapons on their ships as a useless burden."

Nichols balked at the estimated $5 billion price tag for each vessel, and wrote that the money allocated for each ship could instead be invested elsewhere for far better returns.

"I taught military officers for more than two decades at the Naval War College. One thing I learned from conversations with my students was that the Navy really needs to invest more in its officers and sailors, and reduce the tempo of operations that are burning them out," Nichols wrote. "The best ships in the world won’t mean much if their crews are poorly trained and fatigued."

"As the defense analyst John Ferrari recently wrote, for years the Navy has been 'structurally compromised' because its people are exhausted, its ships are 'aging faster than they could be repaired' and the fleet’s readiness is declining," he continued. "These are serious problems that require serious work, but Trump has found a way around all this irritating chatter by sticking his name on a new ship and then telling the military to go build it."

Click here to read Nichols' full essay in the Atlantic.