The U.S. Navy has confirmed to TWZ that construction of the first two Trump class “battleships” is not expected to start until the early 2030s. While cost estimates are still being firmed up, the service is moving now to award sole-source contracts to Bath Iron Works, Huntington Ingalls Industries, and Gibbs & Cox for initial design and other work related to these large surface combatants. Readers can first get up to speed on what is already known about the plans for these ships and the glaring questions surrounding them in our initial reporting here.
President Donald Trump officially rolled out the Trump class warship plan at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, last night. With displacements of at least around 35,000 tons, the vessels are set to be armed with an array of nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as electromagnetic railguns, traditional 5-inch naval guns, laser directed energy weapons, and more. Production is supposed to start with two ships, the first of which will be named USS Defiant, out of a planned initial batch of 10 hulls. Trump has said that the total fleet size might eventually grow to 20 to 25 examples.
“Design efforts are underway with start of construction planned for the early 2030s,” a U.S. Navy official told TWZ. “Design studies are ongoing to refine Navy cost estimates. These details will be available in the PB FY27 [President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2027] budget request.”
Another individual familiar with the program also told TWZ that work to build the first Trump class ships is not expected to begin until the early 2030s. They also told us that the new “battleship” plan is supplanting the Navy’s DDG(X) next-generation destroyer effort, and will leverage work already done on that design concept.
Trump’s “battleships” clearly are not the battleships of WW II. These look more like the much smaller heavy cruiser, outfitted with several gun and missile systems. Of course, because Trump has no understanding of anything having to do with the Navy, he thinks anything bigger than a canoe is a “battleship.”
I’d tag 2036 as “optimistic” for the first ship to enter service, assuming any ships ever enter service. If we say 2032 for laying the keel of the first ship, that’s a good six years and at least one additional Presidential administration for things to go wrong… and well before the program is capable of building a foundation of political support among labor and industry that might protect it from budget cutting down the line.
To put things in gambling terms… The chances of 2036 for the commissioning of USS Defiant (the first vessel) are slim — the ship may even be cancelled before “the 2030’s.”