U.S. News: New Class of Battleships Will Be Named After Trump

“President Trump announced that the Navy is to build a new "Trump-class" battleship, which will be the centerpiece of the president's vision for a new "Golden Fleet." He also announced a new-class of aircraft carrier, but didn't offer further details.

 

The first ship in the Trump-class of battleships will be the USS Defiant. Construction would begin "almost immediately" and would take 2<frac12> years, Trump said.

 

The news follows the Navy's announcement last week that it will commission a new class of frigates.

 

Trump has for years advocated for revamping America's fleet of warships, which he has said are "terrible-looking" and covered in rust.

 

In his first term, he called for a return to steam-powered catapults to launch jets from aircraft carriers, in a move that wasn't successful, and complained about the aesthetics of the Navy's destroyers. He has been personally involved in crafting plans for the Golden Fleet, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

 

"We're desperately in need of ships," Trump said. "Some of them have gotten old and tired and obsolete and we're going to go the exact opposite direction."

 

Trump said the new battleships will be "100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built" and would be faster than existing ships. The Navy could buy 20 to 25 of the new ships, he said.

 

The new battleship will be an upgrade to the Navy's Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which are the workhorse of the current fleet and which Trump has compared unfavorably to rival navies, according to a U.S. official and another person familiar with the discussions. The "battleship" name harks back to the ships with large main guns used until the end of the Cold War, but the new ships will feature a next-generation design.

 

The president made the announcement alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan.

 

The ship draws on work already done by the Navy and ship makers to build a new destroyer, which is in the early stages of development, according to an industry official.

 

Mark Montgomery, a former rear admiral who is senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, criticized the Golden Fleet plan as "exactly what we don't need," and noted that each new battleship will cost at least $5 billion.

 

"We do not need ships that are not optimized to provide lethality against the Chinese threat," Montgomery said, adding that the new frigate has "zero tactical use" because it will not be equipped with a vertical launch system or the Aegis ballistic defense system.

 

"That is not what these are focused on -- they are focused on the president's visual that a battleship is a cool-looking ship," he said.

 

Over the past few months, a Navy team developed and approved requirements for the new class of large surface combatant, according to a U.S. official. The new ship will weigh 30,000 tons to 40,000 tons, Trump said, larger than current destroyers. He said the ships would carry nuclear cruise missiles. The ships will have the ability to add future weapons like rail guns and directed energy, according to one of the people familiar with the discussions.

 

A White House and Navy team earlier this year began planning for a new fleet that will be better suited to counter China, manage the Western Hemisphere and deal with other threats, the Journal earlier reported. The Navy proposed the name "Golden Fleet," following other similarly branded Trump-era initiatives such as the Golden Dome missile defense system he ordered the military to build soon after returning to office.

 

Golden Fleet will comprise a number of large warships outfitted with more powerful long-range missiles, even potentially hypersonic missiles, along with a larger number of a new small ship, the frigate. The new frigate will be based on the Coast Guard's Legend-class National Security Cutter, which HII's Ingalls Shipbuilding division builds in Pascagoula, Miss., and will replace the Constellation-class frigate that the Navy canceled last month after years of delays.

 

The Navy has 287 ships in its inventory, mostly destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, amphibious ships and submarines.” [1]

 

1. U.S. News: New Class of Battleships Will Be Named After Trump. Seligman, Lara; Weisgerber, Marcus.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 23 Dec 2025: A4.