Montana

The Trump-Class Battleship Might Just Be Another Montana-Class Battleship

Published

2 months ago

December 24, 2025

The Trump-Class Battleship Might Just Be Another Montana-Class Battleship

Key Points and Summary – Trump’s newly announced Trump-class “Golden Fleet” recalls the U.S. Navy’s never-built Montana-class battleships: huge, heavily armed ships overtaken by changing strategy.

-In 1940, Montanas were conceived as super-battleships, but World War II quickly proved carriers, submarines, and escorts were more decisive, and the program was canceled before keels were laid.

Trump-Class Battleship. Image Credit: Creative Commons/White House.

-Today, Trump’s vision faces different but parallel constraints: hyper-partisan politics, tight shipbuilding capacity, and a fast-moving shift toward missiles, drones, and distributed fleets.

-The article argues the real lesson of Montana is that strategy and technology can outrun prestige platforms before they ever reach the water. History may be repeating itself.

Trump-Class Battleship Golden Fleet: Another Montana-Class?

In 1940, as war spread across Europe and tensions with Japan continued to rise in the Pacific, the U.S. Navy was still planning for a conflict in which heavily armed surface fleets would play a decisive role. Battleships remained central to American naval thinking, and Congress had just approved a significant expansion of the fleet under the Two-Ocean Navy Act.

Within that framework, Navy planners authorized a new class of battleships that would be larger, more heavily protected, and more powerfully armed than any the United States had previously built.

Designated the Montana-class, the ships were intended to represent the next step in battleship technology and capability at a moment when naval strategy itself was about to change significantly.

The program, however, never worked out as planned. In fact, none of the five planned Montana-class ships ever saw steel laid on a dock. The program was canceled before construction began, and the class never entered service. But why?

The answer isn’t precisely simple: it was a combination of shifting priorities, politics, and a total transformation in naval warfare that effectively made battleships strategically obsolete before they could even be built.

Trump-Class Battleship. Image Credit: Creative Commons/White House Photo.

As U.S. President Donald Trump announces plans for an entirely new class of battleships to form what he calls the “Golden Fleet,” the story of the Montana-class is well worth revisiting today.

The Montana-Class Vision and World War II

In the late 1930s and into the early 1940s, the U.S. Navy’s battleship force was undergoing its most ambitious expansion since World War I. Battleships like the North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa classes were designed or authorized after treaties capped armament and displacement. With treaty restrictions effectively ended and global conflict looming, the Navy chose to pursue a new class of super battleships – designated BB-67 through BB-71 – that would surpass even the formidable Iowa-class in terms of size and firepower.

The Montana-class was set to displace more than 60,000 tons, measure more than 920 feet in length, and carry twelve Mark 7 guns in four triple turrets – significantly more heavy guns than the nine on an Iowa-class ship. Armor protection was also made thicker and more extensive.

Congress authorized construction of the Montana-class as part of the Two-Ocean Navy Act of July 1940, which aimed to expand U.S. naval capabilities as war engulfed Europe and Asia. The intention was for these battleships to serve as the centerpiece of a powerful surface fleet capable of countering German and Japanese warships.

However, even as the designs were being confirmed and contracts authorized, larger strategic shifts were underway. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the Pacific campaign that followed accelerated the prominence and demand for aircraft carriers. The Navy began to allocate resources differently, and shipyard capacity, steel, and manpower became limited during wartime. Ultimately, the need for Essex-class aircraft carriers, destroyer escorts, landing craft, and anti-submarine vessels became more urgent.

Battleship construction, even for the existing Iowa-class hulls, began to compete with these new priorities. And while the Montana design was impressive on paper, it was also slower than the Iowa class and incapable of keeping pace with fast carrier forces that were increasingly defining U.S. naval operations in the Pacific. That made the Montana less suitable for the evolving (and now primary) mission of fleet air defense and power projection.

Montana-Class Battleship vs. Iowa-Class. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Recognizing those realities, the Navy suspended work on the Montana project in mid-1942 before any keels were laid. At that point in the war, aircraft carriers had already proven decisive in major battles like Coral Sea and Midway, and naval planners were under intense pressure to prioritize ships that could be delivered quickly and used immediately in combat. Large battleships that would not enter service until 1945 or later no longer made any strategic sense.

By July 1943, the decision was made official, and the Montana class was formally cancelled.

The steel, manpower, and shipyard space allocated initially for the super battleships were instead redirected toward aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines, and amphibious ships – platforms that were directly shaping the outcome of the war in both the Pacific and Atlantic theaters.

The cancellation, however, didn’t necessarily reflect a failure of the Montana design – though a case could be made that its speed was an issue – but rather a recognition that the role battleships had once played was disappearing faster than the ships could be built.

Image of Iowa-class battleship compared to Montana-class battleship that was never built. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Image is of an Iowa-class battleship. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

In 2025, as President Trump promises an entirely new class of battleships that the U.S. Navy itself acknowledges it needs, there are different issues to contend with.

Trump faces an uphill battle in terms of political partisanship, which threatens to veto (or at least rename) the ships if a Democrat wins in 2028.

In parallel, the changing nature of global combat and the increasing reliance by adversaries on automated systems, drones, and long-range missiles means that strategies and priorities seem to be changing by the year.

About the Author:

Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society. His latest book is The Truth Teller: RFK Jr. and the Case for a Post-Partisan Presidency.

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Related Topics:Battleships Defense Featured Iowa-Class Military Montana-Class Trump-Class

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Montana

Your guide to local sports events, plus what’s on TV

Published

7 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

Your guide to local sports events, plus what’s on TV

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Montana

Montana Department of Agriculture focusing on innovation in 2026

Published

19 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Montana Department of Agriculture focusing on innovation in 2026

HELENA — You probably have goals and plans for 2026—the Montana Department of Agriculture does too.

“We’re really focusing on innovative agricultural practices,” Montana Department of Agriculture director Jillien Streit said.

It’s no secret that agriculture—farming and ranching—is not easy. There are long days, planning, monitoring crops and livestock, and other challenges beyond farmers’ and ranchers’ control.

(WATCH: Montana Department of Agriculture focusing on innovation in 2026)

Montana Department of Agriculture focusing on innovation in 2026

“We have very low commodity prices across the board,” Streit said. “We still have very high input prices across the board, and we have really high prices when it comes to our equipment, and so, it’s a really tough year.”

But innovation, including new practices, partnerships and technology use, can help navigate some of those challenges.

“We can’t make more time and we can’t make more land, so we need to start putting together innovative practices that help us maximize what our time and land can do,” Streit said.

Practices range from using technology like autonomous tractors and virtual fencing—allowing rangers to contain and move cattle right from their phones—to regenerative farming and ranching.

“It is bringing cattle back into farming operations to be able to work with cover cropping practices to invigorate the soil for new soil health benefits,” Streit said.

The Montana Department of Agriculture is working to help producers learn, share, and collaborate on new ideas to work in their operations.

The department will share stories of practices that work from farms and ranches across the state. Also, within the next year or so, Streit said the department is hoping to roll out technology to help producers collaborate.

“(It’s) providing a communication platform where people can get together and really help each other out by utilizing each other’s assets,” she said.

While not easy, agriculture is still one of Montana’s largest industries, and Streit said innovating and sharing ideas across the state can keep it going long into the future.

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Montana

Frontier Conference women: MSU-Northern, Montana Western pull upsets to advance to semifinal round

Published

1 day ago

March 1, 2026

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Frontier Conference women: MSU-Northern, Montana Western pull upsets to advance to semifinal round

BUTTE — MSU-Northern and Montana Western pulled a pair of upsets Saturday at the Butte Civic Center to wrap up the quarterfinal round of the Frontier Conference women’s basketball postseason tournament.

The fifth-seeded Skylights started the day with a red-hot shooting performance to down No. 4 Rocky Mountain College 82-74. Western, the sixth seed, used a third-quarter surge to defeat No. 3 Carroll College 65-56.

MSU-Northern (17-11) and Western (14-13) now advance to Sunday’s semifinal round, where the Skylights will play No. 1 seed Dakota State at noon and the Bulldogs will face No. 2 Montana Tech at 2:30 p.m.

MSU-Northern 82, Rocky Mountain College 74

MSU-Northern sizzled in the first quarter, making seven 3-pointers to take a double-digit lead, and put together a crucial third-quarter run to get past Rocky and advance to the semifinal round.

Becky Melcher splashed four 3s in the first 10 minutes, and Taya Trottier, Canzas HisBadHorse and Shania Moananu added one apiece as the Skylights built a 29-13 lead. Melcher scored 14 first-quarter points and finished with a game-high 30 on 10-of-19 shooting (7 of 15 from 3-point range). She added 11 rebounds, a blocked shot and three steals to her stat line.

Rocky battled back to tie the game at 36-36 in the second quarter on a Brenna Linse basket, but MSUN responded with consecutive triples from Trottier and Melcher and took a 44-38 lead into halftime. The Bears eventually stole the lead back in the third quarter following a 9-0 run capped be an Isabelle Heggem bucket.

But the Skylights again answered — this time with a 13-2 run to take a 60-51 lead. MSUN led 66-59 going to the fourth and wouldn’t trail the rest of the way. The Skylights trailed for less than two total minutes of the game.

As a team, MSUN made 14 of 26 3s in the game. Ciera Agasiva was 3 for 3 from behind the arc, and Trottier was 2 for 3. Trottier had 18 points, eight rebounds and six assists, while Agasiva had 13 points.

Paige Wasson led Rocky (20-9) with 29 points but was 0 for 10 on 3-point attempts. Heggem had a double-double of 21 points and 12 rebounds.

Montana Western 65, Carroll 56

After neither team led by more than five points in the first half, Western broke open a 25-25 tie game by outscoring Carroll 20-9 in the third quarter.

Bailee Sayler scored 10 points in the quarter, including making two 3-pointers, to help the Bulldogs take control. They led 45-34 going to the fourth, and Carroll wouldn’t get closer than six points the rest of the way.

The Fighting Saints were just 18-of-65 shooting (27.7%) for the game.

Sayler scored an efficient 22 points on 7-of-8 shooting. She was 2 for 3 from 3-point range and 6 for 7 at the free throw line. The Missoula native also had nine rebounds.

Isabella Lund added 16 points for the Bulldogs, and Keke Davis had 11 points and 11 rebounds.

Carroll (19-10) was led by Kenzie Allen with 12 points. Willa Albrecht and Meagan Karstetter scored 11 points apiece for the Saints.

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