Trump-class warship may be among costliest military vessels

Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News on Jan 15, 2026

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WASHINGTON — The first of the Navy’s proposed “Trump-class” battleships could cost up to $22 billion, a price tag that would make it one of the most expensive U.S. military vessels in U.S. history, according to an early analysis.

The initial cost estimate for the ship was released on Thursday by Congressional Budget Office naval forces analyst Eric Labs at a Navy surface warfare conference in Virginia. He acknowledged that the final price for the first vessel will depend on decisions that still haven’t been made around tonnage, crew size and weapons. His lowest-cost scenario was $15.1 billion.

The guided-missile battleship would be twice as large as any cruiser or destroyer the Navy has built since World War II, but about one-third the size of the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier that’s now the most expensive U.S. warship. The Ford was delivered in 2017 at a cost of about $13 billion.

Labs said weaknesses in the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base, including skilled labor shortages and supply chain challenges, could make the eventual cost even higher. The average cost of follow-on ships could range from $10 billion to $15 billion, depending on a variety of factors, he said.

President Donald Trump announced plans for the new vessel at Mar-a-Lago in December, saying the ship would be part of his “Golden Fleet” plan to revive U.S. shipbuilding and overhaul the Navy.

While Trump has criticized the U.S. defense industry for delivering weapons late and over-budget, he said the Trump-class ships would be “more expensive but not even comparable in terms of the importance and the strength.”

For now the battleship remains only a concept. A poster displayed at the Mar-a-Lago estate event featured an artist’s rendering of a sleek-looking warship dubbed the USS Defiant, cutting through choppy waters with a laser beam shooting from its deck and smoke billowing from a target in the background.

A Navy fact sheet released at the time suggested the vessel would weigh about 35,000 tons and hold a crew of up to 850 people. The fact sheet — which was later taken down — suggested it could be equipped with nuclear-tipped and Tomahawk missiles, hypersonic weapons and lasers.

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