Last week, President Trump, with his customary fanfare, unveiled plans for a new “Golden Fleet” of Trump-class battleships.

“There’s never been anything like these ships,” the president declared as he showed off renderings of the USS Defiant, the first US Navy battleship to be built since the USS Missouri in 1944.

But while the new battleships look awesome on paper, they may be exactly the wrong choice for modern naval warfare.

The 840-foot Trump-class battleships will be around three times the size of the current Zumwalt class, the Navy’s most advanced surface combat vessel.

The Defiant’s arsenal will include 12 hypersonic cruise missile cells as well as 128 cells for other missiles — a mix of anti-ship, land-attack, anti-aircraft and interceptor types.

An electromagnetic railgun will fire projectiles to extreme range for shore bombardment, and the defensive array includes multiple lasers and small guns for protection against missiles and drones.

Yet there’s good reason why the Defiant, when it’s laid down in 2030, will be the first new American battleship in more than 80 years: Battleships bowed out in WWII with the sinking of Japan’s Yamato, the biggest and most powerful ever built.

By 1945, it was already........

© New York Post