The Trump-Class Battleship: Spectacle Wins Out Over Combat Power – Analysis

Conceptual design of the proposed "Trump-class" battleship for the US Navy's "Golden Fleet" initiative, highlighting its advanced weapon systems and capabilities. Credit: goldenfleet.navy.mil

January 9, 2026 0 Comments
Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute

By Dr. Emma Salisbury

(FPRI) — After finishing my last article on the inability of the US Navy to build frigates, I was hopeful that I could have a bit of a break before the next crisis in American naval shipbuilding. If there were ever a moment to pause, regroup, and refocus on fundamentals—getting proven hulls into the water, fielding more missile launch capability, and accelerating work on a next-generation successor to the aging Arleigh Burke destroyers—this would seem to be it. I absolutely did not predict the sudden reappearance on the horizon of the battleship.

Yet, here we are. Plans have now been unveiled for the USS Defiant, the lead ship of the so-called Trump class of guided-missile battleships. According to the concept materials released so far, this vessel would combine a sprawling arsenal of vertical launch cells, hypersonic missiles, and lasers with a forward-mounted 32-megajoule railgun. In other words, at a moment when American shipyards are struggling to produce sufficient numbers of current surface combatants, the proposed solution is to task them with building 35,000-ton “super combatants” packed with immature or outright nonexistent technologies.

Could such a ship actually work? What risks does it introduce, technologically and industrially? And perhaps most importantly, what would a return to battleships mean for American fleet structure and an already overstretched US shipbuilding sector?

A Game of Battleships

The classic battleship emerged in an era when naval power was defined by the ability to throw heavy shells over long distances and survive doing so. For decades, the battleship sat at the top of the surface combatant hierarchy, mounting the largest guns and the thickest armor, designed to engage enemy fleets in decisive engagements. By the late interwar period and into World War II, this concept had reached its zenith. The US Navy epitomized the idea of the fast battleship with the Iowa class, combining heavy armament with speeds sufficient to keep pace with aircraft carriers.

During the war itself, battleships proved adaptable. They could fight surface engagements but they also excelled at shore bombardment, where a 16in shell coming over the coastline delivered effects that few other systems could match. The US Navy further exploited their size and stability by festooning them with anti-aircraft weapons. By 1945, an Iowa-class battleship carried not only its main battery but also dozens of dual-purpose guns, Bofors, and lighter cannon, turning it into a floating fortress capable of defending an entire task force.

Despite this versatility, the postwar era was unkind to battleships. Aircraft carriers, with their unmatched power projection and flexibility, became the dominant capital ships. Guided missiles began to redefine naval combat, undermining the value of armor and big guns alike. At the same time, battleships were ruinously expensive to operate compared to the value they brought to the fleet. A World War II-era Iowa required a crew of 2,700 sailors, roughly as many personnel as a modern Ford-class carrier that displaces twice as much and delivers vastly greater combat capability. In an environment shaped by both technological change and budgetary pressure, battleships gradually faded away. By the early 1990s, they were museum pieces.

Against that historical backdrop, the emergence of the USS Defiant concept is striking. However, what has been presented so far is less a finished design than a sketch of an idea. There is some dodgy concept artand a list of headline capabilities, but no evidence of the years of iterative design work that normally precede a major warship program. Unlike programs such as DDG(X) or SSN(X), which have received sustained funding for studies and pre-design work, the Trump class appears to have materialized with no visible financial runway whatsoever. It strains credulity to believe that the US Navy’s design apparatus could produce a detailed, build-ready battleship concept in a matter of months, essentially on spare change, especially as the service has delegated so much of its in-house design capability to the shipbuilders since the end of the Cold War.

This matters for two reasons. First, it sets realistic expectations about timelines. Even if the US Navy were to commit fully tomorrow, a ship of this size and complexity would take years to design and many more to build. The first hull would almost certainly not reach the fleet until well into the late 2030s, despite a stated goal of earlier that decade. Second, it raises doubts about how settled the underlying concept really is. The ranges given for even simple matters such as the ship’s length are wide. When programs move this quickly from announcement to advocacy, they are driven more by top-down vision than by bottom-up engineering reality.

And now, the question troubling all of my fellow rivet-counters: Is Defiant actually a battleship? In modern naval taxonomy, the answer depends on how seriously one takes classifications. Today, ship designations often reflect politics and tradition as much as capability. The Germans, for example, famously call almost everything in their fleet a frigate. If the US Navy wishes to call a vessel a battleship, they can. By traditional standards, however, the picture is murkier. Defiant’s dimensions place it firmly in battleship territory: Its ranges for length and beam are comparable to an Iowa, and its speed appears similar. Its displacement is lower, largely because it lacks the heavy armor on an Iowa, but it would still outweigh many historic battleships.

Where the analogy breaks down is in armament and role. Traditional battleships revolved around their main guns; everything else was secondary. As Secretary of the Navy John Phelan said during the announcement, “The Iowa was designed to go on the attack with the biggest guns, and that’s exactly what will define the Trump-class battleships: offensive firepower from the biggest guns of our era.” However, Defiant’s guns, including its railgun, are more like secondary systems. Its primary offensive power, from the specifications given, lies in missiles. In that sense, it more closely resembles an idea the US Navy explored in the 1990s: the arsenal ship, a massive hull packed with missile cells intended to supplement carrier strike groups or operate independently as a firepower hub.

Even by that standard, the Trump class is puzzling. If its purpose is indeed to deliver missiles, it does so very inefficiently. Compared to a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, which carries 122 Mk 41 cells on a 10,000-ton hull, Defiant reportedly offers only a marginal increase in vertical launch capacity (probably around 6 extra cells) despite being at least three times larger. It adds hypersonic missiles, but drops other launchers in the process. The result is a ship that uses enormous displacement for negligible gains in missile firepower.

What Is It Good For?

The answer seems to be that the Trump class is intended to do a bit of everything. It includes large aviation facilities capable of supporting helicopters and V-22 Ospreys, hinting at an amphibious or special operations role. It is designed as a command ship, with extensive command-and-control infrastructure. It reportedly supports nuclear-armed cruise missiles, making it a secondary strategic delivery platform. It is also envisioned as a host for multiple directed-energy systems, from laser dazzlers to high-powered defensive lasers, capped by the railgun. It is simultaneously pitched as a platform for extremely long-range hypersonic strikes and as a gunship that would need to close with its targets to exploit the railgun’s strengths. The conceptual coherence of this mix is, being generous, unclear.

The Trump class also depends on several technologies that are not operational today. Railguns and high-energy lasers have made progress, but their integration into a front-line warship at this scale remains unproven. If those systems fail to mature on schedule, the program risks delays, truncation, or the fate of the Zumwalt class, whose advanced gun systems never became usable. There is also the strategic risk of betting on the wrong technology. Incremental improvements in missiles, sensors, and networks are familiar terrain; pivoting toward a railgun-centric vision is a much riskier bet.

Size compounds the problem. A 35,000-ton surface combatant demands more in terms of workforce, infrastructure, and capital than a destroyer. The president has specified that the ships will be built in the United States, but US shipyards optimized for destroyer construction may not be able to handle a vessel of this scale. Expanding or upgrading those facilities would take time and money, potentially displacing other priorities such as amphibs or carriers.

That context makes me even more concerned about the news in the announcement that the Trump-class battleships are not an addition to the planned fleet architecture but a replacement for DDG(X). The next-generation destroyer is dead, and its intended capabilities are to be folded into the battleship instead. The future surface combatant mix would thus consist of continued Burke production, a frigate at the low end, and these massive guided-missile battleships at the high end.

The implications are profound. DDG(X), for all its uncertainties, was at least sized to fit existing destroyer yards and represented an evolutionary step. A battleship-sized replacement resets the clock. Design work would start largely from scratch, industrial planning would have to be rethought, and schedules would slip. All of this comes at a moment when the US Navy is about to lose the Ticonderoga-class cruisers and their missile capacity, as well as the converted Ohio-class SSGNs. A gap in missile launch capacity is looming, and delays only make it worse.

Lethality Opportunity Cost

The US Navy’s problem is not a lack of imagination; it is a lack of time. It needs more lethality, quickly and affordably. A multi-mission 35,000-ton ship does not obviously meet that requirement. Even if the Trump class eventually performs as advertised, the opportunity cost is enormous. Every dollar spent on a battleship is a dollar not spent on missiles, submarines, destroyers, or autonomous systems. In an era of constrained budgets and intense competition, those tradeoffs matter.

The return of the battleship, whether real or rhetorical, is making headlines, but for the wrong reasons. In the unforgiving arithmetic of naval force structure, spectacle matters far less than timely delivery of usable combat power. While the program may have a chance of making it through the congressional appropriations process under this administration, the smart money would be on it being cancelled as soon as Trump is out of office, leaving the Trump class as a pointless white elephant at the significant opportunity cost of years and dollars taken away from the path toward a balanced and lethal American fleet. Build destroyers instead.

About the author: Dr. Emma Salisbury is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s National Security Program, an Associate Fellow at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre, and a Contributing Editor at War on the Rocks.
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Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute
Founded in 1955, FPRI (http://www.fpri.org/) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization devoted to bringing the insights of scholarship to bear on the development of policies that advance U.S. national interests and seeks to add perspective to events by fitting them into the larger historical and cultural context of international politics.

Litter In The Rhine River: Some 53,000 Items Of Litter Flow Past Cologne Daily

The amount of litter floating in the Rhine is up to 200 times greater than previously believed. This finding was made by University of Bonn researchers in collaboration with litter clean-up organization K.R.A.K.E. e. V. CREDIT: Volker Lannert/University of Bonn


January 9, 2026
By Eurasia Review

The amount of litter floating in the Rhine is many times larger than previously believed. Researchers from the University of Bonn, the University of Tübingen and the Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) partnered with the Cologne-based non-profit pollution-fighting organization K.R.A.K.E. to collect and classify macro litter in a floating litter trap—the only one of its kind in Germany—over a period of 16 months. Extrapolation models based on the observed volume indicate that roughly 53,000 items of macro waste debris float past Cologne on the Rhine river every day. Disposable plastic products make up a large proportion of the litter found in the Rhine. The findings have now been published in the scientific journal “Communications Sustainability.”

It is impossible to quantify exactly how many tonnes of anthropogenic litter are in our oceans, but estimates suggest it is several millions. And more litter is added every year. A large part of this volume flows into the oceans via rivers. “The estimate of these large scale assessments are very difficult to do and we need reliable field data,” says Dr. Leandra Hamann from the Institute for Organismic Biology at the University of Bonn, who has since moved to the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. “In previous studies, visual macro litter observation was a common method to get a reliable ballpark estimate of the actual litter volume, but this has only been done occasionally in the Rhine. In the past, this has mainly involved watching the litter floating past from a bridge. In this case you can easily imagine that some debris will go unnoticed and some things are floating deeper down. Now, we are using a more reliable, continuous and long-term monitoring process.”
Some 20,000 bits of waste collected in 16 months

Partnering with Katharina Höreth of the University of Bonn Department of Geography, Nina Gnann of the Department of Geosciences at the University of Tübingen and the Cologne-based non-profit organization K.R.A.K.E. e. V., Dr. Hamann supervised the citizen science part of the litter trap project in which the researchers and volunteers from the organization systematically collected and classified macro litter floating in the Rhine over a 16-month period. This was done using the “RheinKrake”—a floating litter trap installed in 2022 near the Zoobrücke bridge in Cologne. Spanning three meters of the river, the litter trap captures individual items of debris and garbage which are larger than one centimeter, down to a depth of 80 centimeters. RheinKrake initiator Nico Schweigert discussed the project background: “The idea behind the RheinKrake was to reduce the amount of litter that ends up in the Wadden Sea nature reserve and other places, while raising awareness among the responsible authorities. So we contacted the University of Bonn right at the start about gathering scientific data on the swimming litter being carried along.” A long measurement period was a highly important project feature, as well as measurements being taken day and night.

Relying on a host of volunteers, between September 2022 and January 2024 20,339 macro waste items were collected and classified in accordance with international standards, falling into 183 litter categories within nine material types. Extrapolated to the total volume, this amounts to approximately 53,000 pieces of litter passing through Cologne per day in the linear scenario. This corresponds to a total weight of 2,169 tons per year. Weighted scenarios reach values of up to 3,391.8 tons of waste per year in the Rhine in Cologne. “Extrapolated to the entire Rhine, this is 22 to 286 times higher than previous estimates from other studies,” says Hamann.

“Plastic accounts for 70% of macro litter items, but less then 15% by weight—the weight difference being attributable to textiles, glass, ceramics and other man-made materials polluting our waters.” Analysis reveals that consumer items are the main source of macro litter, comprising over 50 percent of the total. Such items include wooden sticks used in fireworks, glass bottles and plastic caps from beverage bottles. The team often finds fragmented items, for example made of foamed or unfoamed plastic, where it is no longer possible to tell what it originally was without closer study.


Study leads to action recommendations

The researchers have derived a number of action recommendations based on the obtained data. “Disposable products account for 40% of the collected litter—more than half of which is plastic,” relates Katharina Höreth, “but reusable products made up less than 8%; the rest was not clearly identifiable.” Making bottles and packaging part of the deposit scheme could reduce the amount of litter in rivers on a sustained basis.

Another thing revealed by the RheinKrake project is that macro litter volume varies greatly at different times in the year, ranging from around 70 to over 2,700 litter items per trap emptying. “On New Year’s Day, for example, the Rhine carries away remains of fireworks,” says Nina Gnann, “and we have also observed garbage left behind on the banks of the Rhine being washed into the river when water levels rise.” This could be avoided to a significant extent, the researchers have pointed out, by targeted cleanup campaigns and making sure that trash bins are emptied before the water level rise.

The Next Frontier Of Climate Accountability: Making Big Food Pay Its Ecological Bill – OpEd

January 9, 2026 
By Alex Crisp

The “polluter pays” principle transformed the energy industry half a century ago. Now, as industrial agriculture drives climate breakdown, deforestation, and water scarcity, experts say it’s time to apply the same rule to our food systems—and make corporations, not consumers, bear the cost of the damage.

The “polluter pays” principle is a cornerstone of environmental regulation. It raises billions of dollars each year and has been fundamental in pushing energy companies to pursue cleaner, more cost-effective energy sources. But when it was first formalized in 1972 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it faced resistance. Energy companies argued that internalizing environmental costs would damage competitiveness, raise consumer prices, and deter innovation. At the time, many in the energy sector warned that internalizing environmental costs would damage competitiveness, raise consumer prices, and lead to layoffs—arguments widely circulated in the media and industry forums. Despite this, the principle gradually moved from being labeled “radical” and “punitive” to becoming a foundation of environmental and economic law.

Today, we face a similar urgency for change. This time, it’s regarding our food systems.

The problem is agriculture. The very system that sustains us has become a driver of environmental breakdown. It consumes 70 percent of fresh water, occupies half of all habitable land, generates around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is the primary cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss. With the worldwide population expected to increase by 2 billion by midcentury, demand for food is projected to rise by 50 percent, and protein demand alone is set to double by then, according to the 2017 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations report. So how can we produce more food without harming the planet, and where will the funds to support this transition come from?

The Problem With Food

Years of intensive agriculture mean that crops are being planted on exhausted fields; thus, in an ever-growing cycle of decay, farmers use more fertilizer to sustain yields. In his 2022 book Sixty Harvests Left, Philip Lymbery delivers an important message: that humanity’s food system is careening toward collapse. The title echoes a chilling United Nations warning that, under current industrial farming practices, 90 percent of the Earth’s topsoil is likely to be at risk by 2050.

Humanity consumes approximately 350 million tons of meat annually. That is equivalent to “nearly a thousand Empire State Buildings in carcass weight,” according to the book We Are Eating the Earth by Michael Grunwald. Livestock uses nearly 80 percent of agricultural land, yet provides less than 20 percent of global calories. They account for about 32 percent of global methane emissions, while beef production requires more than 15,000 liters of water per kilogram. The environmental cost of meat is disproportionately high. Global demand is rising, and protein production urgently needs innovation.

Intensifying floods, droughts, heat waves, collapsing fisheries, and accelerating species extinction are early signs of systemic stress. Agriculture is at the heart of this crisis. However, if approached differently, agriculture could also be a solution to the increasingly dire threat of climate disaster. The choices made in the coming years will shape not only our food security but also the planet’s resilience for generations to come.

Seven out of the nine planetary boundaries, as set by the Stockholm Resilience Center (SRC) in 2009, have now been breached. These boundaries were created to measure a “safe operating space for humanity.” The SRC states that, “Crossing boundaries increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes.” Breaching these boundaries signals that humanity is pushing Earth’s life-support systems beyond safe limits. This is detrimental not only to all life on Earth but also to business, as supply chains, global markets, and economic stability all depend on a healthy and nurturing environment.

The Proposed Transition of the Food System

As part of the Paris Agreement, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations launched the Food Roadmap at COP28. This was the first time any climate convention put food and agriculture on its agenda—aligning agriculture with climate goals. The roadmap called for a substantial scale-up of investment to develop and deploy low-emission farming methods, alternative proteins, and technologies that enhance soil health, improve water efficiency, and protect biodiversity.

The roadmap outlines 120 science-backed actions, clustered across 10 strategic domains, including soil and water, livestock, forests and wetlands, and healthy diets. The goal is to see food systems worldwide become carbon-neutral by 2035 and to achieve a net carbon sink by 2050. Livestock methane emissions would be reduced by 25 percent by 2030, and food waste would be halved.

The international community has been slow to react. However, by developing and implementing a widely accepted strategy and integrating meat-related levies into its climate initiative, Denmark has become a leading advocate in the transition. Its dual approach of plant-based incentives and emissions costs illustrates a progressive method for reducing meat dependency.

Marie-Louise Boisen Lendal, chair of the Danish fund Plant Foundation, which is overseeing a public investment of around $200 million in innovative solutions and the move toward plant-based foods, says, “Denmark is introducing the polluter pays principle because it is the most effective path to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.” She told me in a “Future of Foods Interview” podcast that Danish farmers are in favor of the idea. New Zealand and other countries, notably those in Scandinavia, exhibit similar signs of movement. The United Kingdom mooted a meat tax in 2024 as part of the National Food Strategy, but ultimately decided against it, citing public pushback.

Regenerative Agriculture Versus Technology

By focusing on rebuilding soil health, increasing biodiversity, and enhancing water cycles, regenerative practices aim to sequester carbon, restore degraded ecosystems, and make food systems more resilient. However, critics argue that the impact of regenerative agriculture on carbon sequestration is overstated. Since these systems may yield less in the short term, more land is often required to produce the same amount of food, and the only available land to exploit is often forested.

Some also warn that the term “regenerative” risks becoming a vague marketing expression susceptible to greenwashing. Sajeev Mohankumar from the FAIRR Initiative—a sustainability investment network managing $80 trillion in assets—confirms that although many investors are prioritizing regenerative agriculture, its implementation remains limited. Mohankumar told “Future of Foods” that although 50 of 79 agri-food companies reference regenerative practices in their strategies, only four have provided financial incentives to farmers or producers.

Meanwhile, new agritech solutions are emerging as complementary approaches that could accelerate the transition when combined with regenerative techniques. Biofertilizers and biopesticides offer more sustainable options for soil health and could eventually replace current chemical inputs, though their effectiveness remains under evaluation.

Gene editing is already in use, producing crops that are resistant to disease, tolerant to drought, or enriched with nutrients—developments that could reduce reliance on pesticides despite political pushback. Precision fermentation is also advancing; this process utilizes microbes to produce dairy proteins, egg whites, and fats without using animals. Several products manufactured using this process have reached the market, though significant scaling up is needed to compete with conventional farming. Finally, cellular agriculture—also known as cultivated meat—continues to progress, with approvals already granted in Singapore, the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Yet here, too, the challenge of scaling remains substantial.

The Cost of a Food Transition

The Food System Economics Commission (FSEC) estimates that implementing a comprehensive transformation of the food system would require annual investments of approximately $500 billion. In a Future of Foods Interview from October 2025, a representative from Cargill confirmed to me that they now invest around 10 percent of their annual profits into scaling alternative proteins. Conversations suggest that Nestlé invests a similar amount. Major food companies—including Nestlé, Cargill, Unilever, Tyson Foods, Danone, Kraft Heinz, PepsiCo, JBS, and Mars—are increasingly investing in or partnering with alternative protein ventures as part of their innovation and sustainability strategies, contributing to the broader sector’s multi‑billion‑dollar investment landscape in plant‑based, cultivated, and fermentation‑derived proteins.

The UN and the philanthropic sector pledged more than $7 billion for food and agriculture during COP28—including $200 million from the Gates-UAE initiative for innovation and $57 million from the Bezos Earth Fund for climate-smart agriculture. Additionally, a public-private SAFE Initiative in Africa and the Middle East has mobilized $10 billion. Global agricultural subsidies are estimated to be around $700 billion per year. The vast majority of this funding goes toward supporting the status quo, including intense and industrialized agriculture, which is often destined for animal feed or processed foods. Current government incentives primarily promote monocultures, industrial livestock production, and a heavy reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

The Media and Public Perception

Few issues cut as close to home as food. Calls to curb meat consumption are growing louder, yet meat intake is climbing with rising incomes in emerging economies, coupled with entrenched habits in wealthier nations, pushing consumption higher. Resistance to reducing meat consumption runs deep. It isn’t just a meal—it’s culture. From Sunday roasts to steakhouse dinners and festive feasts worldwide, animal protein is tied to tradition and identity.

Plant-based alternatives can appear less satisfying and are often viewed with some suspicion. Confusion surrounding nutrition, combined with targeted disinformation campaigns, exacerbates this issue. In the UK, headlines in October 2024 in the Telegraph, such as “Lab-Grown Meat Is Proving to Be a Grotesque Misadventure,” captured skepticism toward the entire sector, citing high costs, technological hurdles, and public unease with labels like “Frankenmeat.” The Washington Post reported on health warnings tied to plant-based alternatives, highlighting scientific studies that grouped meat substitutes with other ultra-processed foods linked to heart disease, glossing over methodological nuances. For example, healthy plant-based foods should not be compared with a box of donuts.

The nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom, funded by interests in the meat industry, launched full-page newspaper ads in 2020 that portrayed plant-based burgers as “ultra-processed imitations” or likened them to dog food. A similar campaign by the think tank, Center for the Environment and Welfare, compared cultured meat cells with “tumor” cells.

Proposals for meat taxes, climate-driven dietary shifts, or calls to reduce livestock farming are often framed by conservatives as attacks on tradition, national identity, and personal freedom. In Germany, farmers and political critics pushed back against proposed increases to meat taxes or VAT on meat, arguing such levies would burden consumers and harm livelihoods. In the Netherlands, discussions about a potential meat tax prompted political pushback, with government coalition parties and meat industry associations arguing that a levy could make grocery bills less affordable for ordinary consumers. In France, politicians have positioned steak and charcuterie as part of the cultural heritage, pushing back against calls for plant-based school meals. In the UK, media outlets such as the Telegraph have described proposals to reduce red meat consumption as an attack on the Sunday roast, tapping into working-class anxieties.

People still perceive meat as tastier, more convenient, and a more dependable source of protein than the alternatives available. Until substitutes can rival meat on these terms, the trend will likely continue upward.

A Necessary Change

The polluter pays principle is not a tax on consumers—it’s a tax on environmental damage, unnecessary harm to animals, and widespread deforestation. It’s a tax on corporations and manufacturers who have profited from the environment, earning billions.

Food systems should pay their actual ecological costs, as the era of subsidized industrial meat is winding down. By integrating this sector into the polluter-pays economy, we move from lip service to climate action, from compensation to transformation. Clean energy isn’t enough; clean food is next. “Much like the fossil fuel lobbyists who argue that the world can’t afford to do away with oil and gas if we want energy security, Big Ag lobbyists defend a current status quo that’s actively heating up the planet in the name of food security,” stated a 2023 Guardian article.

Political and populist pushbacks are a problem, but perhaps the bigger test is whether companies can create meat alternatives that appeal to consumers and serve as an exciting replacement for what people are used to. The math is daunting. But the cost of inaction is climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity. The smartest investment humanity has left to make is to mobilize the half-trillion dollars per year needed for a just food transition through 2050.

Author Bio: Alex Crisp is a freelance journalist focusing on environment, animal welfare, and new technology. He has a background in law, journalism, and teaching. He is the host of the “Future of Foods Interviews” podcast.

Credit Line: This article was produced for the Observatory by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Incoming Atmospheric River Prompts Disaster Declarations For Alaska’s Snowbound Capital

Snow partially obscures a road sign on Douglas Island in Juneau on Jan. 1, 2026. An incoming atmospheric river is expected to dump rain atop the heavy layer of snow, creating risks of floods, avalanches and other problems. In anticipation, Juneau and tribal officials and Gov. Mike Dunleavy have issued disaster declarations. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)

January 9, 2026 
 Alaska Beacon
By Yereth Rosen

(Alaska Beacon) — After enduring weeks of record-breaking cold and snowfall that buried Alaska’s capital city, taxing local infrastructure and services, residents of Juneau are now bracing for an abrupt change to rain that will bring new hazards.

The City and Borough of Juneau and the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska issued a joint disaster declaration late Tuesday in advance of an incoming atmospheric river that is expected to create flooding, avalanche risks and possibly landslide risks. Gov. Mike Dunleavy followed that with a verbal disaster declaration that Juneau officials say will provide quicker access to state help to prepare for and respond to impacts of the coming atmospheric river.

Atmospheric rivers are elongated bands of heat and moisture that move north from more southern latitudes. They can dump vast amounts of rain and sometimes snow, and they have triggered deadly landslides in Southeast Alaska and other mountainous areas.

The coming atmospheric river is expected to bring more snow to Juneau at first, but that is expected to change to rain by early Friday, said Nicole Ferrin, a National Weather Service meteorologist.



Ferrin and other officials spoke at a Juneau news conference held late Wednesday by local and tribal officials.

The expected rains will come on top of snow levels that have already strained building roofs, made roadways impassable and caused other disruptions. Officials warned they could trigger lower-elevation floods from clogged waterways and storm drains and various types of slides at higher elevations.

“This storm and the atmospheric river that’s headed our way on top of this historic, unprecedented amount of snowfall that we’ve had does come with an increased chance for landslides and avalanches,” Ryan O’Shaughnessy, emergency programs manager for the City and Borough of Juneau, said at the news conference.

The city may issue evacuation notices if they are needed in certain parts of town, he said.

Dunleavy’s verbal disaster declaration adds to a series of other recent state disaster declarations. On Monday, he issued a declaration for a December power outage in the Yukon-Kuskokwim village of Napaskiak. On Dec. 10, he issued a disaster declaration for a wind storm that caused widespread damage in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. And he and the federal government issued disaster declarations in October for the damages caused to Western Alaska by the remnants of Typhoon Halong.

The new state, local and tribal disaster declarations are currently only for the City and Borough of Juneau. However, almost all of Southeast Alaska is under a flood watch from early Friday to late Saturday, with additional high wind watches also applicable in some areas, according to the National Weather Service.

Ferrin said the deep snowpack in the mountains around Juneau will likely absorb whatever rain is dumped by the atmospheric river.

That is not the case in more southern parts of the Southeast Alaska panhandle, where there is little to no snow on the ground, she said.

Those areas face some different types of flood dangers, including the possibility of landslides, she said.

The atmospheric river heading to Alaska will bring a little bit of snow to the more southern parts of the panhandle, but that will change to rain more quickly than in Juneau, she said. Rainfall in those areas is expected to total 2 to 4 inches or possibly more, she said.

Combined with expected high winds and flooding, there are landslide risks in the southern part of Southeast Alaska that have been noted by the National Weather Service, Ferrin said.

“We will continue to monitor any potentials for other impacts throughout the event and coordinate with the emergency managers in the southern Panhandle for what needs or any impacts that they’re seeing on the ground in real time,” she said.

Alaska Beacon

Alaska Beacon is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government. Alaska, like many states, has seen a decline in the coverage of state news. We aim to reverse that.