It sounds like something dreamed up in a Hollywood script: a nuclear-powered “battleship” bristling with hypersonic missiles, laser weapons, nuclear cruise missiles and an electromagnetic railgun. Yet the proposed Trump-class battleship is more than an internet fantasy. It is an official, if highly preliminary, US Navy project, and the latest estimate puts the first ship’s cost at an astonishing US$23.4 billion.
Announced by President Donald Trump in December 2025 as the centrepiece of his proposed “Golden Fleet”, the new class would begin with USS Defiant. Its designation, BBG(X), identifies it as a guided-missile battleship whose design has yet to be settled. Since the Navy selected nuclear propulsion, it has also been referred to as BBGN.
The US Congressional Budget Office produced the eye-watering $23.4 billion estimate in August 2026. It is not an approved construction price or signed contract, but an independent attempt to calculate what such a vessel might cost. The CBO estimates another 14 ships would average about $18 billion apiece, taking a 15-ship program to roughly $275 billion. If the ship grows to the Navy’s upper projection of 41,000 tons, the bill could climb still higher.
At between 35,000 and 41,000 tons, the Trump class would be more than three times the size of an Arleigh Burke destroyer and the largest surface combatant built for the US Navy since the Second World War. Nuclear propulsion would provide exceptional endurance, sustained speed and enough electricity to power enormous radars, electronic tons, the Trump class would be more than three times the size of an Arleigh Burke destroyer and the largest surface combat warfare equipment and future laser weapons.
Its proposed arsenal is formidable. Published concepts have included 128 conventional vertical-launch cells, 12 larger tubes for hypersonic missiles, nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles, naval guns, close-in defences, high-powered lasers and possibly a railgun. Aviation facilities could accommodate helicopters, drones and vertical-lift aircraft, while extensive command spaces would allow Defiant to lead a surface action group.
Nevertheless, calling it a battleship is largely political theatre. Traditional battleships relied on massive armour and enormous guns. The Trump class would derive its striking power from missiles, making it closer to a nuclear-powered battlecruiser or floating arsenal ship.
Supporters argue that existing destroyers are running out of space, electrical power and missile capacity. A much larger ship would offer a deep magazine, room for future weapons and a potent visible symbol of American power.
Critics see a gigantic and fabulously expensive target. In a conflict with China, it would face submarines, long-range aircraft, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, satellites and swarms of unmanned weapons. One ship could consume money that might otherwise buy several destroyers, numerous frigates or hundreds of missiles and drones.
There is also the problem of America’s overstretched shipbuilding industry, which is already struggling to deliver submarines, carriers and destroyers on time. No final Trump-class design has been approved, no construction contract awarded and no keel laid.
The ship is technically possible, but its advertised combination of cost, complexity and immature technology makes it politically fragile. USS Defiant may eventually emerge in a reduced and renamed form, but a fleet of 15 to 25 Trump-class battleships remains much closer to grandiose aspiration than naval reality.
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