Free Republic

On Monday, President Donald Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan announced a new series of what they called "Trump Class" battleships, a new initiative to revamp and restore the maritime industry and shore up America's maritime dominance. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also in the Oval Office and offered remarks. Navy's new class of Large Surface Combatants: THE BATTLESHIP.The most lethal surface combatant ever constructed. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/7AH5G4IJj5— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 22, 2025The president was flanked by images of the first Golden Fleet battleship, "The U.S.S. Defiant." Trump opened his remarks...

President Donald Trump announced a new fleet of ships Monday, known as the "Golden Fleet," as he revealed he approved plans for two new "very large battleships." "As you know, we're desperately in need of ships. Our ships are some of them have gotten old and tired and obsolete," Trump said, flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan. Trump said the new ships would be "100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built," in an address from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Renderings behind the president showed the...

China’s latest test shows commitment to perfecting electromagnetic tech while US waffles between defunding or reviving its efforts The Type 072 destroyer (pictured) was spotted in 2018 carrying what military experts believed to be the PLA Navy’s first electromagnetic rail gun. Photo: Handout / SCMP China’s latest electromagnetic railgun test ultimately failed but underscored its relentless pursuit of the weapon, contrasting sharply with the US’s uncertain commitment to the potential game-changing technology. This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) tested an electromagnetic railgun by firing a smart bomb 15 kilometers into the...

Full title; America gets its ‘a@@ handed to it’ in WW3 simulations: U.S. forces are defeated by Russia and China in almost all scenarios, analysts warn Nonprofit global policy think tank RAND performs simulated war scenarios to test how the US would fare against other leading military superpowersThe simulations cover battle on land, at sea, in the air, space and cyberspace Analysts warned last week that the US loses to Russia or China in most scenariosHowever, they said it would take just $24billion annually to improve outcomesThat's about three percent of the $750billion defense budget proposed for 2020  By

The US Navy Is Ready To Deploy A Futuristic Laser Weapon That's Been Likened To 'Star Wars' David Sharp, Associated PressFebuary 16,2014 BATH, Maine (AP) — Some of the Navy's futuristic weapons sound like something out of "Star Wars," with lasers designed to shoot down aerial drones and electric guns that fire projectiles at hypersonic speeds. That future is now. The Navy plans to deploy its first laser on a ship later this year, and it intends to test an electromagnetic rail gun prototype aboard a vessel within two years. For the Navy, it's not so much about the whiz-bang...

The US Navy's electromagnetic railgun project notched up a successful test yesterday. The radical new protoype weapon, operated by the the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, fired* shot a hypersonic aluminium slug at approximately Mach 7.5 to generate muzzle energy of 10.6 megajoules. The Office of Naval Research are hoping that they can scale up their electric cannon to 64-megajoule levels, enabling them to fire heavier projectiles at targets two hundred miles away. Whether electrical pulses of the required magnitude can be generated practicably remains to be seen. Even if they can be, at present railgun barrels only have a...

The US Navy will astound the world tomorrow by test-firing a radical new weapon system at an unprecedented power level. The new piece of war-tech on trial is that old sci-fi favourite, an electromagnetic railgun. According to the Office of Naval Research, which is in charge of the project, the electric cannon will deliver over ten megajoules of energy in one shot. The ONR say this is "a power level never before achieved" by a railgun, and already represents significantly more poke than a normal five-inch naval gun can put behind its shells. The designers hope in future to get...

Scientists at the Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico have accelerated a small plate from zero to 76,000 mph in less than a second. The speed of the thrust was a new record for Sandia’s “Z Machine” – not only the fastest gun in the West, but in the world, too. The Z Machine is now able to propel small plates at 34 kilometers a second, faster than the 30 kilometers per second that Earth travels through space in its orbit about the Sun. That’s 50 times faster than a rifle bullet, and three times the velocity needed to...