President Donald Trump announced plans Monday for a new fleet of “Trump class” battleships at Mar-a-Lago, standing alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan. Trump said the warships would be “the fastest, the biggest and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” with construction starting “almost immediately” on the first of up to 25 vessels, the USS Defiant. The last U.S. battleship was decommissioned in 1992.
The proposed ships would carry hypersonic missiles, nuclear cruise missiles, rail guns and high-powered lasers, according to Trump’s description. However, a U.S. official told The Associated Press that construction was actually planned for the early 2030s, and Politico reported there is no funding in the current Pentagon budget for the warships. Each vessel is expected to cost approximately $5 billion.
Defense experts expressed skepticism about the proposal’s feasibility and strategic value. “This ship is never going to sail,” Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told The Washington Post, predicting it would take four to six years just to develop the design. Retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery told The Wall Street Journal the massive warships are “exactly what we don’t need” to counter Chinese threats, suggesting “they are focused on the president’s visual that a battleship is a cool-looking ship.”