December 28, 2025
Ship of memes
No it's not a Battleship
Commenters call it Grandpa’s meme-ship: big, pricey, not a battleship
TLDR: The administration touted new “battleships,” but experts say they’re just big missile cruisers without classic battleship armor or guns. Commenters mocked the plan, predicting the Navy will stall it as memes compared the design to The Simpsons’ “The Homer,” making the announcement more punchline than policy.
The Trump Administration just hyped new “battleships,” but the naval crowd snapped back: they’re not battleships—more like big missile cruisers with no thick armor and guns that play second fiddle. The spec sheet shows a huge hull with 128 missile launch cells (that’s the standard Vertical Launch System, a missile storage-and-shoot rack), about the same as an older cruiser, so why the upsizing? There’s talk of a ship-launched nuclear cruise missile and hypersonic “Prompt Strike” weapons, but even the Navy’s graphic looks like a rushed school project. Read the expert breakdown in No, it’s not.
Then the comments detonated. One user rolled in with, “better at destroying than building.” Another blasted the proposal as “an image and a bullet list,” predicting the Navy will slow-roll until it quietly dies. A frustrated taxpayer ranted about decades of procurement fiascos, while a jokester said everyone’s in “ok grandpa mode” waiting for the next shiny distraction. The meme factory went full throttle: comparisons to The Simpsons’ “The Homer” car, and an SNL-style sketch where officers unveil a much smaller ship while a celebrity cameo torches the hype. A few gearheads debated missile counts, but the vibe was clear: big promises, bigger eye-rolls.
Key Points
- •The article argues the proposed “battleships” lack primary gun armament and armor, and are better classified as large missile cruisers, akin to the Soviet Kirov class.
- •Published specs show dimensions similar to Iowa and Alaska classes, despite lower displacement; the design appears to use integrated electric propulsion (IEP) rather than nuclear power.
- •A ship-launched nuclear cruise missile, seen as replacing the nuclear Tomahawk, is likely VLS-compatible, suggesting no need for a new ship type to deploy it.
- •Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) hypersonic weapons are planned, but not yet in service; Zumwalt’s refit provides reference counts (four tubes, 12 missiles), with the new ship’s load unclear.
- •The design includes 128 VLS cells—comparable to Ticonderoga-class cruisers—raising efficiency questions versus smaller or stretched existing designs like Arleigh Burke.