New report says that $455 billion dollars required to build 25 new US Navy battleships

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A new class of warships that President Trump says will anchor a “golden fleet” for the Navy is expected to cost at least 50 percent more than estimated earlier, according to a government report released on Wednesday.

The first planned Trump-class battleship, the U.S.S. Defiant, is likely to cost $23.4 billion, $8 billion more than the Navy initially indicated.

The cost of each of the 14 additional vessels is expected to jump to slightly more than $18 billion from $10.2 billion, for a total cost of $275 billion for 15 ships.

The estimates were calculated by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which said that the first of the battleships might take eight years or longer to build.

Months after the announcement, Mr. Trump decided that the ships would be powered by nuclear reactors instead of the gas turbine engines used in destroyers and cruisers, a move that adds significantly to the costs.

Mr. Trump has said he may want to build as many as 25 nuclear-powered battleships, which he called the “golden fleet.”

Building 25 of the larger warships would cost roughly $455 billion, according to the figures provided by the report.

Whether any of the ships will ever actually be built is not certain, as the Navy in recent years has tried and failed to build new types of warships on time and on budget. One such program, the Constellation-class frigate, was canceled just a month before Mr. Trump announced his namesake vessel. Another, called the littoral combat ship, has been plagued by problems and the Navy has already begun decommissioning some of them.

The Ford-class aircraft carriers have been bedeviled by mechanical and electrical problems since the lead ship of the class was commissioned. Only one is currently in service, and the delivery of the next two has been delayed by years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/us/politics/trump-namesake-warships-cost-increase.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20260805&instance_id=179894&nl=breaking-news&regi_id=33896451&segment_id=224252&user_id=6824c27a7b6ef3b8da605d4deae751fe

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It’s also true that in the event of a war with China over Taiwan, we must keep our aircraft carriers at least a 1,000 miles from the action, lest they be sunk.

intercst

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Of all the dumb things to come out of this administration, this has got to be in the top 5. Building 25 of these would probably make it #1.

Building the USS Defiant and additional ships of the Trump class would result in a smaller, less capable fleet. Unlike the battleships of the 20th century, which could endure substantial battle damage and keep fighting because of thick armor and watertight subdivisions, the USS Defiant’s fighting strength will be determined by its vulnerable electronics. That means avoiding hits, not fighting through them. In the missile age, a larger fleet with more ships has a distinct advantage because it presents the enemy with a greater targeting challenge. Today, defense is rooted mainly in numbers and dispersion, not armor. The best approach for the U.S. Navy is to not build the Trump class but larger numbers of smaller ships instead. Not only would that mean more vertical launch cells, and therefore greater firepower. It would also mean a more resilient fleet, with greater capacity to absorb enemy attacks and keep fighting.

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How many swarms of drones would this buy? How many secret ops to build and place small destructive items like the exploding cell pagers and walkie-talkies the Israelis used to decapitate Hezbollah in 2024?

Why is our military stuck in an obsolete mindset when military hardware, strategies and tactics are evolving every day on the news?

Why are we building expensive targets for AI-guided hypersonic missiles?

Wendy

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I guarantee you it ain’t the military who are of an obsolete mindset. ‘Tis Congress and the denizens of the White House cooperating with ever more stupid and greedy military corporations.

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It is not just the USA.

*Germany has massively boosted its defense spending in the past few years. *

But critics are wondering whether these vast sums are being spent in the best way, not least since the FCAS Franco-German fighter jet, which cost over €100 billion, was scrapped in June.

Defense analyst Nico Lange, who once worked for the German Defense Ministry, gave a scathing verdict on the current strategy. “It’s the same dysfunctional system as before. They’re just pouring significantly more money into it,” he told the news portal Web.de. “The point is: Unless you actually change the structures of military planning and procurement, nothing better will come of it.”

But the Ukrainian experience doesn’t mean that heavy weapons systems — often called “legacy systems” have become obsolete, as some analysts have been arguing in recent months. Max Becker, policy fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), said that the Ukrainian war had shown, on the contrary, that tanks or artillery systems were still important to capture and hold territory, as well as for long-range strikes.

Defense procurement is notoriously slow and complicated, and has proved especially so in a country where the arms industry is dominated by major companies such as Rheinmetall that have made a lot of money building tanks and submarines for the world’s militaries.

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This has me wondering - perhaps a target spending level based on GDP isn’t even rationale. Of course, it is entirely arbitrary percentage in the first place (why not 6% or 2.2%?) but perhaps a NATO country can sufficiently provide for their defense and their role in NATO by spending just 1.8% of GDP - while another country might indeed require more. Certainly land-locked countries that share their borders with friendly neighbors should not need the same equipment as other countries.