President Donald Trump’s impulse is to believe that bigger is always better. Still, U.S. military procurement must be laser-focused on the extraordinary challenge of deterring and, if necessary, defeating China in a major war.The Trump-class battleship fundamentally undermines that focus. It would be very poorly suited for a war with China or a revitalized Russian navy. It would be a tremendous drain on strained resources and shipyards. And if war with China ever came, it would end up as a bloody testament to the folly of putting ego before military necessity.The first problem is that of cost. The Congressional Budget Office last week estimated that the first ship of the class, the proposed USS Defiant, would cost $23.4 billion to construct. Each ship thereafter is estimated to cost $18 billion, with the Navy planning to procure 15 ships in total. Contrast this figure with the proposed guided-missile destroyer DDG(X) class that the Trump-class is now set to replace. With the CBO estimating a unit cost of $4.4 billion for each DDG(X) warship, four DDG(X)s could be built for just one Trump-class battleship. And while two DDG(X)s could be constructed each year, completing the significantly larger Trump-class vessels would take longer. An additional problem is that Trump-class warships would rely upon nuclear shipyards, undermining the construction of already heavily delayed submarines. Adm. Sam Paparo of U.S. Pacific Command says having more attack submarines is his warfighting priority.