The D Brief: New ‘battleship’ announced; Nigeria, under US surveillance; China’s ICBMs; Boat-strike Qs; And a bit more.

Plans to build a new class of giant surface combatants were announced Monday by President Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Navy Secretary John Phelan at the president’s Florida mansion. Dubbed “battleships” in defiance of the usual meaning of the term and the “Trump class” in defiance of American tradition, the vessels are to displace some 35,000 tons, three times as much as today’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

Their armament is to include 128 Mk 41 vertical-launch missile tubes, which would be more than the 96 on the Navy’s latest Burkes but less than the 154 on its SSGN guided-missile submarines. 

A fact sheet says the class will also include several weapons that don’t yet exist: a 32-megajoule railgun, two 300kW tactical lasers, and a dozen large tubes for the under-development Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic missiles. The Associated Press notes that “the Navy has struggled to field some of the technologies Trump says will be aboard the new ship. The Navy spent hundreds of millions of dollars and more than 15 years trying to field a railgun aboard a ship before finally abandoning the effort in 2021.”

Phelan said parts of the ship will be built in all 50 states, hewing to the Navy’s two-century-old practice of spreading contracts to shore up political support. See coverage by the Wall Street Journal and USNI News.

Historian’s note: “The last battleship in history to be built was the HMS Vanguard, completed in 1946; the last battleship commissioned by the U.S. was the USS Missouri, which was decommissioned in the 1990s,” Heather Cox Richardson recounted following the president’s announcement. 

Additional reading: 

• “France to build first aircraft carrier in decades,” Semafor reported Monday, though current plans won’t have the carrier ready until 2038;
• But also from France, read “How U.S. Defense Industry Dodged a Rare-Earth Shortage After China’s Curbs,” via the New York Times reporting Monday on a cache of samarium nitrate found at a Belgium-owned chemical factory in Solvay, France (gift link). 

Welcome to our final D Brief of 2025, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Amid our hectic daily lives, it remains more important than ever to stay informed. So we’d like to take an additional moment to thank you this year for reading. We welcome your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2002, the U.S. military lost its first drone in aerial combat when an MQ-1 Predator was shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25.

Around the Defense Department

The U.S. is now conducting surveillance flights over Nigeria after Trump threatened to send American troops there to halt violence against Christians, Reuters reported Monday. 

The contracted flights have been taking place since late November, just weeks after Trump issued the threat, and they typically depart from Ghana before returning, according to flight tracking data. An expert from AEI told Reuters “the operation appeared to be running out of an airport in Accra, a known hub for the U.S. military's logistics network in Africa.” Pentagon officials declined to discuss the surveillance flights. Read more, here. 

Following Monday’s new row between the White House and Denmark, the State Department approved a $951 million sale of 230+ AMRAAM-ER missiles to Copenhagen, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced. 

Additional reading: 

• “Mass Recall of U.S. Ambassadors Leaves Unprecedented Global Vacancies,” the Wall Street Journal reported Monday; 
• And “China likely loaded more than 100 ICBMs in silo fields, Pentagon report says,” Reuters reported Monday as well. 

Etc.

Lastly this year, we’ve compiled a list of recent and semi-recent extended reading links following up on several top U.S. national-security themes from 2025. Topics include DOGE’s hype vs. its reality, Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign, billions in U.S. missile defense contracts, the National Guard’s numerous domestic deployments, Israel’s war with Iran, the Pentagon’s rush to adopt AI, and more. 

Think we missed something big or particularly impactful? Let us know, and have a great upcoming holiday. We’ll see you again in 2026! 

• “How Did DOGE Disrupt So Much While Saving So Little?” the New York Times reported Tuesday in a wrap-up of DOGE reporting highlighting the hype and the actual returns to date;  
• The Times also takes readers “Inside the Deportation Machine,” in a visually-stunning (and arguably terrifying) multimedia presentation published Monday; 
• “How the US is preparing a military staging ground near Venezuela,” which is another illuminating visual presentation, this time from nearly a dozen Reuters reporters, writing last month; 
• “Stephen Miller’s hard-line Mexico strategy morphed into deadly boat strikes,” via the Washington Post, reporting Thursday on how a border-security prerogative evolved into something quite different;
• “U.S. Boat Strike Campaign: Questions Congress Should Ask Executive Branch Officials,” via three veteran lawyers writing in early December for Just Security; 
• “The International Law Obligation to Investigate the Boat Strikes,” also via Just Security, writing last Monday; 
• “Russia Dismisses Reports of Progress in Ukraine Peace Talks,” the Times reported Sunday; 
• “Gargantuan Golden Dome contract vehicle clears 1,000-plus firms to vie for slices of $151 billion,” via Defense One’s Tom Novelly, reporting in early November; 
• “Another 1,000 defense companies chosen for $151B Golden Dome competition,” which is also from Novelly, reporting Friday in an update; 
• “Build Your Own Golden Dome: A Framework for Understanding Costs, Choices, and Tradeoffs,” via Pentagon veteran Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute, delivering a whopping 51-page report on the technology in September;
• Harrison also authored the much shorter analysis, “Golden Dome is a Trillion Dollar Gambit,” over at War on the Rocks a week later; 
• Lawfare is maintaining a “Trump Administration Litigation Tracker,” which includes numerous cases involving the president’s National Guard deployments across nearly a half-dozen U.S. cities since June, several of which have been put on hold while others have been stayed pending appeal; 
• Israeli “Army chief, hinting at potential new Iran war, says IDF will strike ‘wherever required,’” the Times of Israel reported Sunday; 
• “​​Pentagon to Add xAI’s Grok to AI Service Early Next Year,” the Information reported Tuesday;
• See also “The Good, Bad, and Really Weird AI Provisions in the Annual Defense Policy Bill,” via the Brennan Center for Justice, writing last Monday; 
• “Global investors turn to Chinese AI as Wall Street fears bubble,” Reuters reported Tuesday;  
• And relatedly, “The Pentagon and A.I. Giants Have a Weakness. Both Need China’s Batteries, Badly,” the New York Times reported Tuesday.