Meet the ‘most lethal surface warship to appear in a long, long time’ the Trump-class battleship, which will be the next generation of battleships in the U.S. Navy: a 35,000-ton behemoth equipped with hypersonic missiles, megawatt lasers, and an electromagnetic railgun boasting a 32 megajoule punch that fires tungsten projectiles at Mach 6. This is certainly impressive, but perhaps one of the most fascinating features of this behemoth might prove to be its weakness.
The railgun has long been the “holy grail” of naval weaponry: a system that doesn’t rely on chemical propellants but instead on electromagnetic acceleration, capable of high velocities, large magazines, and low costs. The Navy’s own trials produced some truly astounding footage, but also a frightening set of findings: fifteen years of research and development, five hundred million dollars invested, and a program canceled in 2021 for reasons of complexity, sheer power draw, and the durability of the rails. Even then, the best-case scenario for a U.S. railgun would be a system capable of firing off a few dozen rounds before exhausting the rails, with a range that would be well within the bounds of antiship cruise missiles.
However, the design team supporters of the Trump class think that this time it might be a whole different ball game altogether. The scale of the battleship, combined with the possibility of nuclear power, might be the answer to the power requirements that the railgun system has always lacked and could never do without. However, the backdoor development of the technology on the part of the allies is quietly turning the tables on the weakness that the technology currently has. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force was the first military to fire a railgun on a naval ship in the open waters of 2023.
Even by April 2025, the test firings on the JS Asuka have already broken the 120 successful firings with no indication of damage to the railgun barrel, thanks to the use of a secret blend of metals rather than the copper-lined tracks, all this on a budget a fraction of the amount allocated to the U.S. program, being currently being developed into a full-fledged system which boasts rapid and continuous firings as well as compact power storage. This development is not overlooked by the Pentagon.
It is heartening to the military strategists to contemplate the possibility of collaboration between themselves and the Japanese, as well as perhaps other countries within Europe, to expedite the development of a solution to the problems of barrel life, thermal issues, as well as the problem of the projectile’s stability. This is part of the military transformation of Japan, which is no longer an importer of advanced military technology, but is instead an importer not only of advanced military technology, but also a contributor to the development of the same. It is, however, important to point out that the technological problems still remain significant.
The production of a million amps for each strike would require the use of high capacity capacitors or pulsed alternators, the latter of which would have to qualify for use within the U.S. Navy. Then, of course, would be the issues related to the heat production as a result of the hypersonic velocity of the projectile being launched.
However, despite the kinetic energy of the tungsten rod being this impressive, the railgun’s capacity to strike a single target within a strike still raises a number of questions as to the use of the railgun within the context of a saturation attack, wherein a number of missiles as well as drones would simultaneously attack the Trump class. However, the Trump class will also possess a number of directed energy weapons.
These would include two 300kw lasers, two others which would be 600kw, as well as a number of optical dazzlers, which would be able to handle all the close-in threats, as opposed to the ones currently being eliminated by the use of expensive missiles. We know those technologies are not yet ready for primetime, but we believe they are needed to break this cost imbalance of having to use multi-million-dollar missiles to defend against very low-cost drones, According to Navy officials as cited. When these laser-based systems come online, then these would be able to handle several missions that the railgun is to handle for the defense of the Trump class.
It can then focus on long attack missions. At this point, the addition of the railgun to the design for the defense of the Trump class would mean very little. It would be more or less the Navy making a statement about its plans and its intentions to explore ideas that have been previously rejected by the Navy in order to ‘overmatch’ its potential rivals. It would also be pondering whether its size is what would make or break its ‘Mach 6’ plans.
