CBO Puts the Trump-Class Battleship Program at $275 Billion, First Ship at $23.4 Billion

The Congressional Budget Office estimated on August 5, 2026 that the U.S. Navy's planned Trump-class battleships would cost $275 billion to develop and buy through 2056, with the lead ship alone at $23.4 billion — roughly $6 billion above the Navy's own projection. The estimate covers a program of 15 nuclear-powered guided-missile battleships, the first of which the Navy intends to order in 2028.

CBO put the follow-on ships at about $18 billion each in 2026 dollars. A conventionally powered variant would be cheaper, at roughly $21.3 billion for the lead ship and $243 billion for the program, but the Navy has told Congress it intends to use the same reactor plant that powers the carrier Gerald R. Ford. The agency cautioned that its figures are "highly uncertain" and rest on its own reading of a design that is not yet mature.

The ship as briefed would displace about 35,000 tons on a hull roughly 880 feet long, with a crew of up to 850. The armament shown by Navy officials combines vertical launch cells, hypersonic missiles, a main gun, laser weapons, electromagnetic railguns and the nuclear-armed SLCM-N sea-launched cruise missile. Carrying nuclear weapons, CBO wrote, "would give the battleship more firepower than any ship in the fleet other than the Navy's 14 Ohio class ballistic missile submarines."

Those dimensions have no modern precedent. The Arleigh Burke class, the backbone of the American surface fleet with 78 hulls built, displaces 9,900 tons; the three Zumwalt-class destroyers displace 15,907 tons. The largest surface combatant built by any navy since 1945 is the Soviet Kirov-class battlecruiser, at 28,000 tons. At 35,000 tons the Trump class would exceed all of them, and at the 41,000-ton upper bound CBO examined it would sit within reach of a light aircraft carrier. That heavier variant raises the cost per hull by 16 percent, which Defense News calculated could push the program toward $528 billion.

Cost is not the only constraint. Neither Bath Iron Works nor Ingalls Shipbuilding — the Navy's two surface-combatant yards — is certified to perform nuclear work in ship construction. Newport News Shipbuilding, the only yard that is, is already committed to carriers and submarines. Building roughly one battleship every other year while sustaining two destroyers a year would require the industrial base to raise large surface combatant output by about 60 percent by 2058, at a time when a destroyer takes 11 years from funding to delivery against five in the 2000s.

The Navy's fiscal 2027 request carries $1 billion in advance procurement and $837 million in research and development for the class, with $17 billion sought in fiscal 2028 for the first ship and $13 billion in fiscal 2030 for the second. Congress has not authorized the program. President Trump has said the "Golden Fleet" could eventually run to 20 or 25 ships; the Senate Budget Committee has costed a 25-ship version at $455 billion.

Reaction has split along familiar lines. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle has told Congress the Navy needs "significant payload volume for all future fights," including magazine capacity for weapons that do not yet exist. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said Congress "cannot afford to commit to another massive military boondoggle that will only succeed in filling the coffers of the military-industrial complex."

The next decision point is the fiscal 2027 defense bill, which will determine whether the advance procurement and research money survives. CBO described its report as a preliminary estimate; a firmer number will not be possible until the design matures.