President Donald Trump arrives at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., for a news conference on Dec. 22, 2025. (Alex Brandon/AP)
President Donald Trump’s plan for a “Golden Fleet” has been short on details so far — its official website says “Webpage currently under construction. Check back soon for updates.”
But the lack of specifics hasn’t stopped the project from drawing praise and scorn from politicians and military analysts.
Trump announced the concept Dec. 22 during an event at his Mar‑a‑Lago residence in Palm Beach, Fla., highlighting a proposal for a new “battleship” that would field firepower he said was “100 times more than anything built.”
The battleships, as currently planned, would be armed with 128 MK-41 vertical launch system cells, 12 Conventional Prompt Strike long-range hypersonic missiles, an electromagnetic railgun, conventional five-inch guns, and be protected by AN/SPY-6 radar.
Initial schematics of the first battleship — which Trump said should be named USS Defiant — include an array of weapons, including yet-to-be-developed energy weapons, and anti-drone defensive systems.
Trump’s proposed 20 or more Golden Fleet BBG(X) battleships would cost $15 billion to $22 billion for the lead ship, according to a Congressional Budget Office report. Later ships would cost more than $9 billion each once production is well underway.
The battleship is projected to have a displacement of about 35,000 tons. The last battleships built by the United States, the Iowa-class, launched near the end of World War II, weighed about 57,000 tons. The new battleship would be significantly smaller than the Navy’s largest ships, including the new Ford-class aircraft carriers, with a displacement of 100,000 tons.
A screen grab of the website for the Golden Fleet. (U.S. Navy)
The design is similar to the DDG(X) — the Navy’s previously planned next-generation destroyer. But the Trump-class battleships are larger.
Navy Secretary John Phelan has recently attempted to flesh out the Golden Fleet plan, saying it is an umbrella term for an overhaul of the size and mix of ships the Navy will have in the future, including uncrewed ships operating in concert with manned vessels. The profile would include the Ford-class carriers, new Virginia-class attack submarines and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines already joining the fleet.
Phelan touted the Golden Fleet as putting more “hulls in the water” at a faster pace, during a speech Feb. 13 at the West 2026 conference on naval defense in San Diego.
“High-end platforms — Next-generation battleships, continued production of destroyers, carriers, and submarines that deliver survivability, magazine depth, and sustained fires,” he said. Phelan said the “low-end mix” would include the new class of frigates based on a Coast Guard cutter design, as well as unmanned surface and submersible vessels.
While warships are the center of debate, Phelan said the Golden Fleet would also be the proving ground for what he called upgraded Navy’s logistics and auxiliaries, “sustaining power across distance.” He touted a streamlined procurement system and the use of artificial intelligence for planning and design.
Phelan said in January that the Golden Fleet would boost job growth.
“Over the next decade, shipbuilders and suppliers will need to hire roughly 250,000 skilled workers to meet demand,” he said during the Surface Navy Association’s national symposium, in Arlington, Va. “That means apprenticeships, vocational training, accelerated pipelines and partnerships with local communities.”
Secretary of the Navy John Phelan speaks at the Surface Navy Association National Symposium in Arlington, Va., next to models of Golden Fleet ships produced by Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division, Jan. 13, 2026. (Christopher Matassa/U.S. Navy)
Phelan reiterated his support for a possible $1.5 trillion defense budget, which Trump has suggested he will request for the 2027 fiscal year. That figure, at least 50% higher than the 2026 budget, is likely to face significant opposition from many Democrats and Republican fiscal hawks in Congress. But Phelan promised to push on with the plan.
“American industry is resurgent, and the Golden Fleet exists because the president looked at the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, and said plainly: Move faster. Build smarter. Deliver capability now.”
The Golden Fleet garnered early support from some experts who said naval strategy has been too rooted in the past of the Cold War and the post-9/11 wars against terrorism.
Brent Sadler, Senior Research Fellow for Naval Warfare and Advanced Technology in the Allison Center for National Security, wrote an article for the conservative Heritage Foundation titled “The U.S. Navy Must Build the ‘Golden Fleet’.”
While lamenting a lack of details so far, Sadler said an overhaul of the Navy’s ship types and purposes was long overdue. He listed several types that he believes the Golden Fleet will bring to American power projection at sea.
“A new frigate based on U.S. Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter, large unmanned corvettes armed with long-range weapons, and logistics ships,” Sadler wrote.
The idea, Sadler said, could lead to the construction of smaller escort carriers like those used in World War II to supplement today’s large main carriers.
But for some analysts, the “Golden Fleet” is less a boon to Navy planning than a boondoggle that will lead to more planning U-turns, pushing several surface fleet proposals farther into the future.
Ronald O’Rourke, who recently retired after 42 years with the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, including as lead defense analyst, spoke this month at a panel on shipbuilding at the West 2026 conference.
O’Rourke said the Navy can ill afford another major course change in ship production, another reversal for the Navy that has left in its wake discontinued programs and abandoned ship types.
“They’re all well intentioned,” O’Rourke said. “But in some cases, it’s resulted in people learning just enough about shipbuilding to get things wrong. And the discussion about shipbuilding has suffered from bad information, magical thinking, hand waving, arguments and confusion about causes, effects and solutions.”
A rendering of the proposed Trump-class USS Defiant. (Naval Sea Systems Command via Facebook)
A graphic rendering of the future USS Lafayette, named in honor of Marquis de Lafayette and his service during the American Revolutionary War. Lafayette was schedule to be the fourth of the new Constellation-class guided missile frigates. (Shannon Renfroe/U.S. Navy)
O’Rourke pointed to the “sustained churn” in surface ship designs over the past 25 years, across programs for littoral combat ships, frigates and destroyers, leaving some projects abandoned or truncated. He pointed to the recent cancellation of the delayed Constellation frigate program, which will end after the first two of the six initial ships are completed at a Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin.
Marc Cancian, a former Marine officer now an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says flatly that the Golden Fleet — at least the battleships at the center of its concept — will never be built.
“There is little need for said discussion because this ship will never sail. It will take years to design, cost $9 billion each to build, and contravene the Navy’s new concept of operations, which envisions distributed firepower,” Cancian wrote in January on the CSIS website.
Phelan has countered critics by saying the Golden Fleet addresses churn by casting a hard eye on delayed Navy programs approved by earlier administrations and by putting AI and a business-style approach into building and operating the fleet.
“We’ve been locked in a perpetual state of triage, diverting attention to shipbuilding programs that fall behind schedule and grow in cost,” Phelan said.
Phelan told the naval defense industry audience in San Diego that support for the Golden Fleet would bring an upgraded Navy.
“The modern fight favors those that can rapidly prototype, test under fire, incorporate operator feedback and scale successful innovations on the front lines in real time, faster than their opponents can react,” Phelan said.
