Trump's Golden Fleet and Golden Dome look vulnerable

They are President Trump’s two favourite defence programmes, intended to be part of his legacy, keeping America safe from its enemies after he has left the White House. Top Democrats, soon to take control of vital Congress committees, describe them as Trump’s vanity projects, too outlandish and far too expensive. With the Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives and the Senate, Trump’s Golden Dome, the proposed space and ground-based anti-missile shield, and his Golden Fleet of self-named nuclear-powered battleships, look set to be axed or, at least, starved of funds to make progress unsustainable. Pete Hegseth, the under-fire war secretary, is asking for $1.5 trillion for his budget next year which is already considered by the Democrats to be far in excess of reality. The 15 Trump class battleships will cost about $275 billion over a production period of 26 years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated. It’s not cost alone which is putting these battleships under the microscope. The strategic purpose of these 35,000-ton warships, each costing more than an aircraft carrier and equivalent in cost to ten Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyers, is being questioned. Adam Smith, Representative for Washington state who is seeking support to become the chairman of the House armed services committee in January, wrote in a leaked letter to Democratic colleagues:”We need an appropriate mix of high-end survivable systems and lower-cost attritable [cheap, uncrewed platforms whose loss in battle would be acceptable] capabilities, not a fleet of nuclear-powered battleships as proposed by the president.” The decision to make the battleships nuclear-powered, escalating costs, was confirmed by the US Navy in May. Trump wanted an all-powerful, multi-capable battleship to command the seas, no doubt with China’s huge warship-construction programme in mind. As a result, the design envisaged a warship armed with nuclear and conventional missiles, hypersonic weapons and an electromagnetic railgun that can fire a projectile at seven times the speed of sound. After the CBO published its report warning of rising costs of the Trump class battleship in August, Smith, then ranking member of the House armed services committee, said the programme was “an ill-conceived vanity project”. Trump insisted his Golden Fleet shipbuilding programme would produce a warship “100 times more powerful that any battleship ever built.” However, without Democratic support for funding his dream, the Trump class battleship, the first of which, set to be named USS Defiant, is supposed to be in service by around 2036, looks doomed. “Given the midterm election results, the battleship programme is now aground and taking on water,” retired US Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery told the American TWZ military technology website. Golden Dome will likely survive in some form because air and missile defence of the homeland remains a vulnerability. The Trump clsss battleship which was already unlikely to see the light of day, now almost certainly will only exist in Trump’s fevered dreams," said Eric Edelman, defence policy chief at the Pentagon under President George W Bush. Trump announced his Golden Fleet vision at Mar-a-Lago in December 2025. It followed the Golden Dome project revealed in January the same year; and then came the president’s announcement in September that his proposed triumphal arch, known as the Golden Memorial Arch, would be filled with drones and snipers. None of them look likely to survive. The Golden Dome project has already provoked wildly different estimates over long-term costings. The Pentagon’s Golden Dome project office has estimated that the programme will cost about $185 billion through to 2035., with $17.5 billion being requested for next year. However, the CBO has come up with a figure of $1.2 trillion to develop, deploy and operate the system over a period of 20 years. The Pentagon disputes this figure. Part of the problem for congressional researchers is that the Pentagon has been sparing with cost details. The largest expenditure will be the development and deployment of space-based interceptors, intended to hit incoming missiles during their boost phase.The CBO has estimated these interceptors could cost $740 billion. The debate in a new Democratic-controlled Congress will not just be about affordability. Huge costs scuppered President Reagan’s 1980’s Star Wars programme which was even more ambitious than the Golden Dome. In both cases, however, there were and are strategic issues to be debated: how effective would a national missile-defence system be as a deterrent to potential enemies? Would it encourage Russia and China, for example, and possibly North Korea, significantly to increase their arsenals of long-range missiles, nuclear and hypersonic? If so, would that provoke a new arms race? At present, however, with the victorious Democrats soon to hold the purse strings, it seems to be mostly about the cost of Trump’s favourite defence projects.

Pete Hegseth to face impeachment?

From Day One, Pete Hegseth has been a controversial in-your-face US defence secretary (renamed war secretary, very appropriately). Now, after nearly two years at the helm of the Pentagon, Hegseth looks likely to be the first of Donald Trump's cabinet members to face impeachment by the soon-to-be Democratic-controlled Congress. He can't be blamed specifically for the war on Iran. That was Trump's choice, urged on by Benjamin Netanyahu. However, he has always been an arch supporter of the war and he promised Trump that it would all ve over in short shrift. He has been proved very wrong. But, in addition to his bellicose approach, Hegseth has caused an upheaval in the Pentagon with his multiple sackings of top commanders, the ban on transgenders serving in the military, and his dislike of having women in combat roles. There will be plenty of ammuniton for the Democrats to hurl at him and it will be a tough fight if he is summoned for an impeachment trial. Will Trump continue to back him? So far, Trump has been his biggest supporter, but that could change if Hegseth is forced to appear before his Democratic critics soon after the change-over in Congress takes place in January. The Democrats appear to have gone for Hegseth first, before Trump, probably because they think he will be easy pickings. Taking on the president is a much bigger deal.

Trump plotting his last two years as president

His first sacking and first appointment since the disaster of the midterm elections has proved beyond doubt that Donald Trump intends to battle ahead against all the political odds with his usual fire and fury. Susie Wiles, who served as his White House chief of staff, was blamed, fairly or unfairly, for the defeat of the Republicans, and her replacement, Stephen Miller, former deputy chief of staff, takes over. He is the hardest of all hard nuts, especually on immigration, and his appointment will put fear in the hearts of every member of Trump's cabinet. He will stand no nonsense. Anyone showing signs of disloyalty to the president to whom he is devoted, will get short shrift. He will also be the gatekeeper who keeps people out of the Oval Office unless he approves. Susie Wiles, known as the Ice Maiden, was pretty tough, but Miller is in a different league. Miller will also, unofficially, be in charge of ensuring that Trump's legacy is enshrined in greatness. That will probably have to include ending the wars in Iran and Ukraine. Trump cannot leave office with these two wars still running. So, look for some big developments over the next few weeks or months.

Could Trump really be plotting to hit Iran's Pickaxe Mountain bunker?

The mood sare wings in Washington are going wild. One moment, there's talk of a negotiated settlement to end the war against Iran The next, officials hinting that Donald Trump is intent on striking the nuclear bunker buried deep under the granite Pickaxe Mountain. This has been on the cards ever since the war began. But for some reason, never explained, American bombers never targeted it in Operation Midnight Hammer in June last year but concentrated on the other nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz. However, one of the reasons is that the bunker under Pickaxe Mountain is buried far more deeply. Even the 30,000lb Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) which was used against the three other sites in June last year couldn't destroy Pickaxe. So how is Trump contemplating attacking Pickaxe? Perhaps it's all threatening bluster to scare Tehran into agreeing a deal. But then if they know the US has no weapon, bar a tactical nuke, capable of destroying Pickaxe, why would they suddenly seek peace if they think they, and Pickaxe, can survive another round of strikes? Trump wants to make sure that before he leaves office in just over two years' time, Iran will have been stopped/blocked from developing a nuclear weapon. One way or another, Pickaxe cannot be allowed to remain unscathed because if Tehran wants to accelerate plans to build a bomb, they will do it in relative safety at the Pickaxe site.

Is there now hope of an end to the war with Iran?

Trump and the Republicans may have lost massively. But will this lead to an end to the war with Iran and maybe even the war in Ukraine? Judging by the huge effort underway by the Qatari government to get negotiations going, there may just be a settlement in the making, particularly over Iran's nuclear programme. The hard-faced head of Iran's national security council, ex-General Mohsen Rezaei, is apparently privately showing more interest in a nuke deal than he is in public. And guess where he is today? Yes, he's talking with Putin in Moscow. What's that about? Why would Putin want the war between Iran and the US and Israel to end? Well, with Iran out of the way as a crisis, he could then put all the pressure he can on Trump to force a "victory" for him in Ukraine: a formal takeover of the Donbas region, with only Russian speakers allowed to live there. Trump will be desperate for foreign policy deals after the crushing defeat in the midterms and this could be it: a grand-bargain deal to end the wars in Iran and Ukraine. One person who will be involved in this is JD Vance, the vice president, who will then be annointed as Trump's successor for the 2028 election.

Trump trounced

Donald Trump is convinced that the sweeping victory for the Democrats in the midterm elections was not a vote against him but he concedes the Iran war and the price of oil (as a result of the war) may have played a part. Judging by the impressive figures achieved by the Democrats, I don't think there is much doubt that thousands of voters swapped sides because of the antipathy towards Trump. This may not have been a presidential election but it was all about the president and his policies, particularly his decision to go to war with Iran and his misjudged belief that he could win a famous victory against the anti-west regime in Tehran in a matter of days. That misjudgment has meant that the cost of living has shot up and American voters have had enough. Now Trump faces the ignominy of being called a lame-duck president for the next two and a bit years. He won't like that and we will all have to wait and see what that will mean for the US and for the world.

Cost of living is Trump's downfall

Sometimes, politics is a simple business. As the president of the United States, you can win wars, lose wars, you can build monuments, you can play the global policeman game, you can shout and holler and claim greatness. But in the end, when you need to impress the voters, it comes down to the cost of living, what you pay for groceries eash week, how much you have to pay to fill up the tank with petrol, what it costs to go to the doctor or dentist. This is why Donald Trump is expecting bad news today. For all his claims about making America Great Again, the average family just looks at the cost of what it takes to feed everyone in the household and it's higher than it used to be and going higher every month. The American people knows it's because their president went to war with Iran, causing a worldwide economic crisis but they are not going to vote against Trump and the Republicans because of this war - they probably approve the idea of stopping Iran going nuclear - but because the repercussions have hit everyone. Trump promised that the war with Iran would soon be over and the price of oil would drop to what it was before the US and Israel launched its military operation against Iran. But, as news broke this morning of a new strike by the US military on an Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz, it is clear this war is not going to end soon. So, the Republicans will probably do very badly today in the midterm elections. But the truth is, the cost of living is not going to get better by voting for the Democrats. Trump still has two years and two months left in power. If Iran isn't sorted out soon, the cost of living is going to get worse and worse.