Trump Eyes New Navy Fleet --- Early talks center on replacing warships with vessels to better counter China

“WASHINGTON -- President Trump has said he wants a whole new fleet of warships. And now they have a name.

 

Senior White House and Navy officials are in early discussions to replace the current mix of warships with a new "Golden Fleet" that would be better suited to counter China and other potential future threats, former and current officials said.

 

Trump, who has previously criticized the look of modern warships, is involved in the plans and has had multiple conversations with Navy officials about the new vessels, the current and former officials said.

 

Navy officials have dubbed the project Golden Fleet, following other similarly branded Trump-era initiatives, such as the Golden Dome missile defense system he ordered the military to build in January and the Gold Card immigration program.

 

The new fleet would comprise a number of large warships outfitted with more powerful long-range missiles, along with smaller ships such as corvettes, the people said. The Navy has 287 ships in its current inventory, mostly destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, amphibious ships and submarines. A new class of frigates is also in the works.

 

Specifically, the White House and the Pentagon are in early talks about building a heavily armored, next-generation ship that could weigh as much as 15,000 to 20,000 tons and carry more powerful weapons, even potentially hypersonic missiles, in larger numbers than current destroyers and cruisers, the current and former officials said.

 

"The reason we went to battleships in World War II was to get to that longer-range cannon," said Bryan Clark, a retired Navy officer and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, who is involved in the discussions. "I think here we're just saying, 'well, in the missile age, this is what we need for longer range, it's these big missiles.' And so this battleship of tomorrow is going to be this thing that carries really long-range missiles."

 

In Trump's first administration, he called for a return to steam-powered catapults to launch jets from aircraft carriers. He publicly complained that he didn't like the look of the service's destroyers, comparing them to rival navies. And he has talked about how he recommended changes to the design of the Constellation-class frigate.

 

Experts are divided on whether a super large warship is essential to countering China, but say longer-range missiles are key to maintaining the edge in the Pacific. China is rapidly building new warships and modernizing its existing ones, and the U.S. military says it needs long-range missiles to get past China's extensive anti-air defenses.

 

Trump hinted at the plans when addressing generals and admirals gathered in Virginia last month. At the time, he spoke nostalgically about the Iowa-class battleships that were phased out in the early 1990s.

 

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the president has bolstered "maritime dominance -- including by securing a $43 billion investment in the Working Families Tax Cut, establishing a White House Office of Shipbuilding, negotiating a historic deal with Finland to construct 11 new arctic cutters, and more."

 

While experts applauded Trump's prioritization of the Navy's fleet, some pointed out that revitalizing America's shipbuilding industry will take more than a new name. Mark Montgomery, a retired naval officer and senior fellow with Foundation for Defense of Democracies, urged the Trump administration to invest in consistently funding modernization of the country's shipyards and fixing the current backlog of ship maintenance.

 

"I'm all for a dramatic reimagining of the fleet, [but] I'm not sure super large surface combatants are the right answer," said Montgomery, who noted that Trump has taken issue with the look of certain ships. "The president's aesthetic eye is not the proper paradigm to evaluate tactical ship requirements."

 

Trump pledged to grow the fleet to 355 ships in his first term, but the Pentagon's plan to reach that goal wasn't codified until near the end of his time in office. The Biden team soon abandoned it and conducted their own analysis of a future fleet.

 

Under the Golden Fleet concept, the Navy wants to move away from a specific number of ships as a goal, Clark said. Instead, officials will focus on a fleet of roughly 280 to 300 crewed ships, plus large numbers of unmanned vessels -- called "robotic and autonomous systems" -- to bridge the gap. The drone ships would act as "hedge forces" in each maritime theater to make up the difference between what the fleet can do day-to-day and what might be needed in conflict, Clark said.

 

Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, has discussed using such a model in the Pacific, dubbing it "Hellscape." The strategy calls for deploying thousands of unmanned submarines, surface ships and aerial drones to flood the 100-mile waterway that separates China and Taiwan in the case of a Chinese invasion.” [1]

 

1. U.S. News: Trump Eyes New Navy Fleet --- Early talks center on replacing warships with vessels to better counter China. Seligman, Lara; Ward, Alexander.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 25 Oct 2025: A6.