President Trump will announce on Monday a new fleet of large warships he is calling “battleships,” according to a U.S. official and another official familiar with the discussions, marking a step toward
achieving the president’s vision for a new “Golden Fleet
.”
The news follows the Navy’s announcement last week that it will commission
a new class of frigates. Trump has for years advocated for revamping America’s fleet of warships, which he has said are “terrible-looking” and covered in rust. In his first term, he called for a return to steam-powered catapults to launch jets from aircraft carriers, in a move that wasn’t successful, and complained about the aesthetics of the Navy’s destroyers. He has been personally involved in crafting plans for the Golden Fleet, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
The new battleship will be an upgrade to the Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which are the workhorse of the current fleet and which Trump has compared unfavorably to rival navies. The “battleship” name harks back to the ships with large main guns used until the end of the Cold War, but the new ships will feature a next-generation design.
Another U.S. official said the president would make an announcement on Monday afternoon alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan, but wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the announcement.
Mark Montgomery, a former rear admiral who is senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who is in touch with people involved in the discussions, said Trump will announce the battleship on Monday. However, he criticized the Golden Fleet plan as “exactly what we don’t need,” and noted that each new battleship will cost at least $5 billion.
“We do not need ships that are not optimized to provide lethality against the Chinese threat,” Montgomery said, adding that the new frigate has “zero tactical use” because it will not be equipped with a vertical launch system or the Aegis ballistic defense system.
“That is not what these are focused on—they are focused on the president’s visual that a battleship is a cool-looking ship,” he said.
Over the past few months, a Navy team developed and approved requirements for the new class of large-surface combatants, according to the U.S. official. The new ship will weigh 30,000 tons, larger than current destroyers, and have the ability to add future weapons like electromagnetic rail guns and directed energy lasers, according to one of the people familiar with the discussions.
The Navy will launch a competition to choose a vendor, and plans to procure the first hull in 2030, the official said.
A White House and Navy team earlier this year began planning for a new fleet that will be better suited to counter China, manage the Western Hemisphere and deal with other threats, WSJ first reported. The Navy proposed the name “Golden Fleet,” following other similarly branded Trump-era initiatives such as the Golden Dome missile defense system he ordered the military to build soon after returning to office.
Golden Fleet will comprise a number of large warships outfitted with more powerful long-range missiles, even potentially hypersonic missiles, along with a larger number of a new small ship, the frigate. The new frigate will be based on the Coast Guard’s Legend-class National Security Cutter, which Ingalls builds in Pascagoula, Miss., and will replace the Constellation-class frigate that
the Navy canceled last month after years of delays.
The Navy has 287 ships in its inventory, mostly destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, amphibious ships and submarines.
Battleships of the 20th century were heavily-armored, built with large guns so that they could attack ground targets and ships from beyond the range of an enemy’s weapons, said Bryan Clark, a naval expert with the Hudson Institute. They gained notoriety during the 20th century world wars and were the centerpiece of a battle formation—similar to the role the aircraft carrier is today, Clark said Monday.
“The idea was the battleship had big enough guns they could shoot far enough that it generally was able to shoot from outside the range of most of its opponents,” he said.
Today the Navy needs a more powerful ship to better defend its carriers, which have become increasingly vulnerable, most recently seen by an attempted Houthi attack on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. Clark said long-range missiles on today’s warships replaced the role of guns on battleships since they could fly much longer distances, and strike a target with more precision and accuracy. But to remain relevant for future battles, the ships need more firepower, which means more missile-launching tubes and the ability to carry hypersonic weapons.
“You need something like two-to-three times the size of an [Arleigh Burke-class destroyer],” said Clark, adding, “you need some ships with that type of size so that you can have the defenses to protect the carrier, and the reach to be able to attack targets from a place where you can be survivable.”
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