00:00As Commander-in-Chief, it's my great honor to announce that I have approved a plan for the Navy to begin the construction of two brand new, very large, largest we've ever built, battleships.
00:13You know, you used to build the Iowa, the Missouri, the Wisconsin, the Alabama, and many others.
00:20We had big battleships. These are bigger, but they will have 100 times the, there'll be 100 times the force, the power, and there's never been anything like these ships.
00:36These have been under design consideration for a long time, and it started with me in my first term, because I said, why aren't we doing battleships like we used to?
00:46And the, these are the best in the world. They'll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.
00:59So if you look at the Iowa, the Missouri, Wisconsin, Alabama, and others, but they were similar in size, some a little bit bigger than the others.
01:08But if you take the biggest one, it's 100 times more powerful. They're longer by a little bit, but the, and they're bigger, they're bigger ships, but they hold much more.
01:22They use the word lethality. Battleships are the largest, sturdiest, and most heavily armed vessel built specifically for naval combat.
01:31But while America has built many new warships over the years, they've been, they've tended to be smaller, much smaller, and not conducive to where we are and where we're going, and peace through strength.
01:47But including, we've been building aircraft carriers. We're going to be upping that also. We're going to be going to a superior aircraft.
01:57We have the Ford class. We're going to be upping that to a different class of aircraft carrier.
02:04And we haven't built a battleship since 1994. These cutting-edge vessels will be some of the most lethal surface warfare ships.
02:16They will be actually the most ever built other than our submarines. We have submarines which will have, in many ways, even more lethality, and we have many of them under construction.
02:27Each one of these will be the largest battleship in the history of our country, the largest battleship in the history of the world ever built.
02:39And again, it's 100 times more powerful than the previous Iowa class, it's called. Those are the big ones that you'd see on a show.
02:47Victory at Sea. I don't know if anyone's seen Victory at Sea, but it was a classic.
02:51They'll help maintain American military supremacy, revive the American shipbuilding industry, and inspire fear in America's enemies all over the world.
03:01We want respect. We're going to have it. We already have it. We're more respected now than we ever were.
03:08A year and a half ago, they laughed at us. Now they respect us again at levels that they've never respected us.
03:13We envision that these two ships, we're talking about 10, but we're going to start with two, and we're going to quickly morph into 10.
03:22And ultimately, we think it's going to be anywhere from 20 to 25 of these.
03:26But we're starting with the first two immediately, and we're going to then be very quickly involved with, I think, we're going to do another eight.
03:35And then we're going to ultimately, and pretty quickly have a total of about 20 to 25. We'll make that determination.
03:44We envision that these ships will be the first of a whole new class of battleships to be produced in the years to come.
03:52From Theodore Roosevelt, the great white fleet, you remember that, the great white fleet, to the legendary USS Missouri, whose massive guns helped win World War II.
04:06America's battleships have always been unmistakable symbols of national power.
04:11We stopped making them for whatever reason. I don't know.
04:15And I want to congratulate John Thalen, who is your secretary, secretary of the Navy.
04:23He came to me the first day we met. He talked about battleships, and I said, you're absolutely on the right track.
04:30He said, why are we doing other things? We have missiles, which are much more expensive.
04:35By the way, these battleships have tremendous numbers of missiles, but they also have guns.
04:39And in many ways, guns can do the trick just as well as missiles at a tiny fraction of the cost.
04:47Once completed, these new 30 to 40,000 ton plus vessels will be the flagships of the American naval fleet.
04:57And there's never been anything built like them.
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