“Battleship “Trump”: Bloomberg published the estimated cost of the warship.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
Source: Bloomberg
Details: According to the newspaper, the preliminary estimate of the cost of the ship was released on Thursday by Congressional Budget Office naval analyst Eric Labs at a Navy conference on land warfare in Virginia. He acknowledged that the final price of the first ship will depend on decisions yet to be made about tonnage, crew and armament. Its lowest previous value was $15.1 billion.
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The guided-missile battleship will be twice the size of any cruiser or destroyer the Navy has built since World War II, but about three times smaller than the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, currently the most expensive US warship. Ford was put into operation in 2017, its cost was about 13 billion dollars.
Labs noted that weaknesses in the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base, including a shortage of skilled labor and supply chain issues, could push the bottom line even higher. According to him, the average cost of the next ships could be from 10 to 15 billion dollars, depending on various factors.
What preceded: US President Donald Trump announced plans for a new ship at Mar-a-Lago in December, saying the ship would be part of his “Golden Fleet” plan to revive US shipbuilding and reorganize the Navy.
While Trump has criticized the US defense industry for delays in arms deliveries and budget overruns, he said the Trump-class ships would be “more expensive, but not comparable in importance and power.”
A Navy bulletin published at the time said the ship would weigh about 35,000 tons and carry a crew of up to 850. The newsletter, which has since been deleted, said the ship could be equipped with nuclear-tipped missiles and Tomahawk missiles, hypersonic weapons and lasers.