So how much will a fleet of Trump-class nuclear-powered battleships cost?

SALT LAKE CITY — When President Donald Trump announced plans to build a new fleet of Navy warships — dubbed "Trump-class battleships" — he envisioned a vessel "100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built."

No surprise, producing such singular Navy ships won't be cheap.

The price tag of the Trump-class battleship program could reach $275 billion (in 2026 dollars) over a three-decade period, from 2027-2056, according to a recent report released by the Congressional Budget Office.

The Trump-class guided missile battleship "would be the most heavily armed surface combatant the Navy has ever built," the report noted.

"It would carry anti-air, land-attack and anti-ship missiles, hypersonic missiles, nuclear cruise missiles, large lasers, and a rail gun — a weapon that uses electromagnetic energy to fire non-explosive projectiles at hypersonic speeds."

The first ship from the Trump-class battleship project — the USS Defiant — would cost about $23 billion. For the 15 ships proposed to be purchased through 2056, the cost would average slightly more than $18 billion per ship, according to the report.

When the Trump-class battleship program was unveiled in December, Trump and then-Navy Secretary John Phelan spoke about the new Trump-class warship as a spiritual successor to the battleships of the 20th century, but historically that term has referred to a very specific type of ship — a large, heavily armored vessel armed with massive guns designed to bombard other ships or targets ashore, The Associated Press reported.

The Navy has released a few details about the new battleship class, although those details were reportedly for a conventionally powered version of the ship.

"The battleship would have a full-load displacement of 35,000 tons or more, a length of 840 to 880 feet, and a sustained speed in excess of 30 knots," noted the CBO report. "The Navy revealed those specifications before deciding to use nuclear propulsion on the ship, a change that would significantly increase the cost of the ship and affect its design."

The ship's primary weapons would be missiles, according to The Associated Press.

If built to those specifications, the ship would be the largest surface combatant in the world and larger than any surface combatant built for the Navy since World War II — more than 3½ times the size of the Navy's Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer and more than twice the size of the Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyer, according to the CBO.

The Trump-class battleships, the report added, would add "considerable firepower" to the Navy's fleet.

"The Navy has stated that the ship would be equipped to carry the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, or SLCM-N. The number of nuclear-tipped cruise missiles the ship would carry is unknown but would probably be small given the Navy's descriptions of the nuclear cruise missile program.

"Nevertheless, carrying nuclear weapons would give the battleship more firepower than any ship in the fleet other than the Navy's 14 Ohio class ballistic missile submarines, which carry 70 percent of the nation's deployed strategic nuclear warheads."

Phelan said in December that the future USS Defiant "will inspire awe and reverence for the American flag whenever it pulls into a foreign port."

Phelan was fired last April and replaced by Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao.

'Trump' battleships detractors

The envisioned class of "Trump" battleships prompts division. Some lawmakers reportedly have concerns about their technical feasibility. And in January, the Cato Institute questioned investing funds and time into what it labeled "vulnerable and costly surface ships."

Instead, the Institute argued, the Pentagon should prioritize "more worthwhile naval systems" such as submarines "which have a better chance of surviving enemy air and missile strikes."

But Navy leaders have defended the proposed battleship in congressional hearings, arguing the service needs a larger ship to accommodate more capability, reported Stars and Stripes.

"We need significant payload volume for all future fights," Adm. Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations, told the House Appropriations Committee's defense sub-panel in May. "We need that payload volume to scale not only with the munitions we're going to have today but future munitions we don't know."

Trump: 'We are going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry'

Trump's "Golden Fleet" of warships — including the initial funding of the eponymous battleship class — has been a clear priority of the president during his second administration.

During a 2025 speech before Congress, Trump announced the creation of the "Office of Shipbuilding."

Americans, he said, live in a dangerous world and need protection "like never before."

"To boost our defense industrial base," Trump added, "we are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding."

The president added that the U.S. was once a prolific shipbuilder. "We don't make them anymore very much, but we're going to make them very fast, very soon. It will have a huge impact."

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