Courtney at NDAA Markup: The Trump Battleship Is the Exact Opposite of Every Lesson We’ve Learned

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, during the House Armed Services Committee markup of the FY 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Congressman Joe Courtney (CT-02), Ranking Member of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, spoke in support of an amendment to the FY27 NDAA which would strike all funding ($1 billion) for the battleship program. The amendment will be voted on later today during markup of the FY27 NDAA.

"[The battleship program] is the exact opposite of every lesson that we've learned in terms of failures of shipbuilding and ship construction," Courtney said.

FULL REMARKS AS DELIVERED

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is true, this is a concept that's been around for quite a while. The last time we built a battleship was in 1944, the Iowa-class battleships, that was the USS Missouri.

The concept of the battleship was announced last December, down in Mar-a-Lago, where, again, we didn't have any designs, we didn't have any studies in terms of analysis that normally go into starting a new class of any ship.

What we did have was an AI-generated, picture on a poster board that showed lots of kind of bombs going off and, you know, pretty images that really almost look like a cartoon.

So we have now in this mark before us, $1 billion, which, again, if you read the language, it's $390 million to go to detailed design, again, I want to emphasize the point, there is no design that exists, and that's what some of this money was allocated for, and $610 million that actually goes for long lead items. So they're ordering, actually, you know, fabricated parts and steel for a ship that does not even exist in terms of a design concept.

It is the exact opposite of every lesson that we've learned in terms of failures of shipbuilding and ship construction, whether it's the Zumwalt-class, which, again, construction started before design was complete, Littoral Combat Ship, same thing. And the in the cruiser CG(X) program, which also collapsed.

So again, from a just purely shipbuilding sequential, you know, intelligent approach, this proposal before us, again, is way premature and unvetted. And if you look at the future year defense plan, the FYDP (future year defense program) in Year 2, which would be in 2028, they're requesting $16.8 billion. So it's going from $1 billion to $16 billion really in about 18 months period of time for a platform that has no design.

I want to quickly just end by saying, in April of 2022, the Russian, flagship, the Moskva, was sunk by two missiles fired by the Ukraine's Neptune system, has a 200-mile range. And again, that was the flagship of the Russian Navy in the Black Sea. That demonstrates really what kind of contested maritime environment we have.

The Neptunes are like pea shooters compared to what China has in terms of DF missiles, DF-21, missiles that can cover thousands of miles, the advances that are taking place in drones, anything on the surface of the sea right now, again, is in a much different world than certainly it was in 1944 and even in 2014.

The world is changing fast. We need that distributed lethality that Mr. Smith - we don't need a lumbering, vulnerable battleship. Mr. Chair, I had asked to enter into the record "Trump's Big Battleship is a Sitting Duck" from Admiral James Stavridis, a four-star Navy officer who was the head of European Command.

I yield back.