Dear Editor:

All of us would agree that President Donald J. Trump is “a very aesthetic person.” One glance at his Oval Office makeover, with its self-adhesive gold flourishes, confirms his self- assessment. It should come as no surprise, then, that he informed senior military officers at Quantico last September that the U.S. Navy’s warships are “ugly.” Never mind that today’s hi-tech, anti-ship weapons require vessels designed to evade radar detection; our Commander-in-Chief dismisses this principle of modern ship construction.

"They say, 'Oh, it's stealth.' I said, 'That's not stealth.' An ugly ship is not necessary in order to say you're stealth. I don’t like some of the ships you’re doing aesthetically.” (I’m not sure what our friends and neighbors at B.I.W. might think about this, but the president has always been right about everything; though not an accredited naval architect, he is, in his own words, “a very stable genius.”)

So: we need warships that are “tough, more elegant,” ones that look like “a yacht with missiles on it.” Only then can we match the Italian and Russian fleets for aesthetic value. And, in keeping with Trump’s mantra, we must stop using aluminum (“that melts if it looks like a missile is coming at it”) and build our ships out of “solid steel,” as we did back in World War II, when America was “great.” We must revive the construction of battleships (‘Trump-class,’ of course), even though these warships have been obsolete since the late 1940s and no country in the world is making them now.

If Trump had read any history of modern naval warfare, he would know that astronomically expensive capital ships have been consistently destroyed by cheap weapons. Bismarck; Arizona; super-battleships Yamato and Mushashi; General Belgrano; and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet’s flagship, Moskva, are brutal reminders that shells, bombs, torpedoes, missiles and sea- drones can send them to the bottom at a fraction of the cost.

Mr. President, thanks, as always, for your attention to this important matter. We would recommend, though, that you focus on your Constitutional duties as captain of the ship of state and leave the future of the U.S. Navy to our battle-tested commanders.

Bill Hammond

Boothbay