President Donald Trump has announced that the United States Navy will build a new so-called “Trump-class” battleship as part of the White House’s effort to modernize a fleet that has been hampered by years of cost overruns and delays.
A poster displayed during the event, held at Trump’s luxurious Mar-a-Lago estate, showed an illustration of a futuristic-looking warship, called the USS Defiant, cutting through choppy waters, with a laser beam shooting from the deck and smoke billowing from a target in the background.
Next to the ship was an image of Trump raising his fist, in an almost identical reproduction of the defiant pose he struck minutes after surviving an assassination attempt in 2024. Another poster showed the vessel sailing in front of the Statue of Liberty.
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“Some of them have gotten old and tired and obsolete, and we’re going in exactly the opposite direction,” Trump said. “The US Navy will lead the design of these ships alongside me, because I am a very aesthetic person.”
The Navy also announced on December 19 that it is developing a new frigate based on the Legend-class cutter, in an attempt to bolster the surface combatant fleet, which is currently just a third of the size considered necessary by the service. The ship, named FF(X), will be built by HII, based in Newport News, Virginia.
The new vessels are part of Trump’s plan, called the “Golden Fleet”, to revitalize the US shipping industry and fill the shortage of smaller ships, amid competition with China, responsible for around 53% of global shipbuilding. The United States builds just 0.1% of the world’s ships, according to a recent assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The US has not built a battleship since the 1940s, having since opted for aircraft carriers, smaller destroyers and other ships equipped with long-range missiles rather than big guns. Trump said the Navy would start with two units and aim to build up to 25 ships.
Production, however, may take some time to get off the ground. Trump’s first attempt to build a new frigate, during his previous term, resulted in a program with significant delays and costs that were much higher than anticipated. The original plan called for the construction of 20 ships, but escalating costs and delays led to a drastic cut in the project’s ambitions.
Trump had already associated his name with another weapons system, the F-47 stealth fighter, in reference to the fact that he is the 47th president of the United States. He also renamed institutions such as the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, as well as the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.
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“What I’ve learned is that the president’s idea is not only a good one, but it’s something the Navy desperately needs and now has a formal requirement,” Navy Secretary John Phelan said at Mar-a-Lago. “The future Trump-class battleship, the USS Defiant, will be the largest, most lethal, most versatile and most beautiful warship in all of the world’s oceans.”
The US shipbuilding sector is far behind China’s production pace, and the Trump administration has prioritized investment in the industry to reduce this gap. Earlier this year, Trump created a new Office of Naval Construction, with plans for tax incentives to attract companies to the country.
The presidential announcement indicates that “the Navy is trying to harness the administration’s enthusiasm for shipbuilding and say, ‘OK, you want to build ships — so let’s think about new ships to build, because if there’s money and energy, let’s direct it toward what the Navy needs,’” Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said in an interview.
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The Trump-class ship would replace the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which still have about four decades of service life left and are equipped with the Aegis combat system, responsible for missile defense capabilities.
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