Experts Are Worried About The US Navy’s Newest Battleship

The battleship was once one of the central elements of power in any blue-water navy, and they were prominent throughout world conflicts for half a century. The first modern vessel of its time equipped with steam turbines, the HMS Dreadnought, ushered in the age of floating massive gun platforms in 1906; in the decades that followed, these humongous navy ships only grew larger and deadlier. As World War II dawned the battleship rose to power, but after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent Battle of Midway, battleships took a back seat to aircraft carriers.

These massive ships continued to serve sporadically in the United States for decades, but all U.S. battleships have since been made into museum ships. Despite this, on December 22, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump revealed his plan for the USS Defiant (BBG-1), a future Trump-class battleship that would become a leading warship in the so-called “Golden Fleet” moving forward. Not only was this surprising, but experts instantly decried the move as wasteful, unnecessary, and out of touch with the reality of modern naval combat, which remains centered around aircraft carriers since WWII.

Restructuring the Navy to make room for a new class of capital warship is not only extremely expensive, but it’s also incredibly worrisome for several reasons. Experts have concerns about the new battleship plan based on international response, specifically from China. in an interview with the Global Times, Zhang Junshe, a military affairs expert for the Chinese government, called the large-scale ships easy targets. With China being a near-peer potential enemy of the United States in future naval aggression, this is reason enough for planners in the U.S. Navy and the Department of War to take pause and consider the weight of President Trump’s interest in 21st-century battleships.

Putting aside the facts that the President has never served in the armed forces and that it’s antithetical to custom (though not unheard of) to name a ship class after a living person, adding battleships of any kind to the fleet isn’t a good idea. The USS Defiant is planned to be larger and longer than any U.S.-made WWII-era battleships, which were massive warships to begin with. These new battleships would be armed with hypersonic missiles, rail guns, Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles (SLCMNs), and high-powered lasers, which all sound great, but none of the mentioned weapon systems is in the full-scale production or use category. 

As of writing, all these weapons are still largely in the experimental, test, and prototyping phase of development, though the U.S. is getting closer to fielding its own hypersonic missiles. Unfortunately, reports out of China say that not only does the country have plenty of its own hypersonic missiles already in service, but it also has hypersonic anti-ship cruise missiles in its arsenal — something the U.S. has no viable defense against. From this perspective, the President’s plan to construct up to 25 Trump-class battleships likely doesn’t concern China in the least.

In addition to the size of these ships and their still in-development armaments, the feasibility of President Trump’s plan remains suspect. U.S. shipbuilding capacity, which is already fully engaged in building highly advanced Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, Virginia-class nuclear submarines, and other vessels, is currently incapable of meeting the President’s demands.

It’s hard to imagine, but adding massive battleships packed with all manner of new technology and weapons systems could actually lead to a weaker U.S. Navy. This is due to the way the USN has fought wars for more than 80 years. While changing tactics isn’t necessarily bad, embracing an abandoned engagement model over a superior, battle-tested, and proven one is arguably unwise and financially risky. Early analysis from the Congressional Budget Office backs this up, indicating that building the USS Defiant could cost as much as $22 billion.

If you know anything about new military projects, you likely already realize that number will probably rise significantly. Whenever new tech is designed and built, it costs far more than initially planned, so you might as well switch those twos for threes. The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) is the most advanced and expensive warship in the U.S. Navy’s fleet, and it cost $13 billion. A new fleet of battleships, with as many as 25 potentially on order, could end up costing the Navy around $1 trillion when all is said and done.

That’s because procurement is only the first phase — maintenance, operational, and other expenses will likely add billions on top of the already high price tag. That’s not only astronomical, but it’s also unsustainable, as it would deprive the DoW and the Navy of much-needed funding for other projects. The USN’s fiscal year 2026 budget is $292.2 billion, so you can see that there’s already a huge difference between cost and available funds. Granted, should the Trump-class battleship plan proceed, it wouldn’t see all 25 ships built in a single year; the cumulative costs, however, would simply be unsustainably high.