WASHINGTON (AP) — US President Donald Trump announced a bold plan for the Navy to build a new super-sized warship he calls a “battleship,” part of a broader vision to create a “Golden Fleet.”

“They will be the fastest, the largest and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump said during the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

According to Trump, the ship, the first of which will be called Defiant, will be longer and larger than the Iowa-class battleships of the World War II era, and will be armed with hypersonic missiles, nuclear cruise missiles, rail guns and high-powered lasers. All of them are technologies that are in various stages of development, which is in charge of the Navy.

The announcement comes just a month after the Navy scrapped plans to build a new, small warship, citing mounting delays and cost overruns, and instead opted for a modified version of a Coast Guard cutter that was in production until recently. The Maritime Armed Service has also failed to build its other newly designed ships—such as the new Ford-class aircraft carrier and Columbia-class submarines—on time and on budget.

Meanwhile, the Navy has had difficulty implementing some of the technologies that Trump says will be aboard the new ship.

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That military force spent hundreds of millions of dollars and spent more than 15 years trying to deploy a shipboard railgun before finally abandoning the effort in 2021.

Laser technology has been more successful in being incorporated into Navy ships in recent years, but its use remains limited. A system designed to blind or disable drone sensors is now aboard eight destroyers after spending eight years in development.

Developing nuclear cruise missile capabilities or deploying them on ships could also violate nonproliferation treaties the United States has signed with Russia.

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing plans, told The Associated Press that design work for the new ship is already underway, with construction planned to begin in the 2030s.

Trump and Navy Secretary John Phelan meet. They referred to the new Trump-class warship as a spiritual successor to the battleships of the 20th century, but historically that term has referred to a very specific type of ship: a large, heavily armored vessel armed with massive cannons designed to bombard other ships or targets on land.

This type of ship reached its greatest prominence during World War II, and America's largest battleships—the Iowa class—weighed approximately 60,000 tons. After that conflagration, the role of the battleship in modern fleets rapidly declined in favor of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles. The US Navy modernized four Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s, adding cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, along with modern radars, but by the 1990s all four were decommissioned.

According to a newly created website for the “Golden Fleet,” this new “guided missile battleship” will be about the same size as the Iowa-class battleships, but will only weigh about half as much, about 35,000 tons, and will have much smaller crews of between 650 and 850 sailors.

Its main weapons will also be missiles, not large naval guns.

Since now Trump has long held strong opinions on specific aspects of the Navy fleet, sometimes with a view aimed at preserving older technology rather than modernizing.

During his first term, he unsuccessfully called for the return to use of steam catapults to launch aircraft from the Navy's newer aircraft carriers, instead of the more modern electromagnetic system.

He has also complained to Phelan about the appearance of Navy destroyers, and has criticized Navy ships for being covered in rust.

At his confirmation hearing, Phelan told senators that Trump "has texted me numerous times late at night, sometimes after 1 a.m.," about "rusty ships or ships in a shipyard, asking me what I'm doing at the time." "

In a visit to a shipyard working on the now-canceled Constellation-class frigate in 2020, Trump indicated that he personally changed the ship's design.

“I looked at it and said, ‘That's a terrible looking ship, let's make it beautiful,’” Trump said at the time.

He said Monday that he will also play a direct role in the design of this new warship.

“The United States Navy will lead the design of these ships with me, because I am a very aesthetic person,” the president said.

Phelan said the new Defiant “will inspire awe and reverence for the flag every time it docks at a foreign port.”

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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.