This thing is getting a proper announcement on Monday, right?

I'm actually really curious to see what the Navy thinks the role and function of a modern battleship should be.

Especially with the designs coming out of China focusing on missile and especially drone launching capabilities, I wonder if ONR will go the same way or if they have a different vision for the future of capital warships.

The article mentions the Navy saying it wants to focus on distributing naval assets across many smaller vessels, and that seems far more sound in an era where an autonomous naval drone can pack enough punch to take down a massive vessel and can be launched in swarms. I'm not sure what the value of massive vessels are in a world where that exists. Would it be capable of launching its own drone fleet of screening ships? Is it a massive EWAR platform? Does it even have guns? I dunno. I wanna see though.