President Trump announced on Monday that the United States Navy will begin building massive battleships for the first time since 1944, to join the “Golden Fleet.”
Trump announced that the new Trump-class battleships will include two ships to be built immediately, with the first named USS Defiant. He said the vessels will be 100 times more powerful than the Iowa-class battleships from WWII and will be equipped with missiles, hypersonic weapons, railguns, high-powered lasers, nuclear-armed cruise missiles, and AI technology.
“There’s never been anything like these ships,” Trump said. “These are the best in the world. They will be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100x more powerful than any battleship ever built.”
NEW: President Trump announces that he approved a plan for the construction of two new battleships.
He says they will be larger than ever and have “100x the power” of the Iowa-class battleships.
The last battleship (USS Missouri) was built in 1944 decommissioned in 1992. pic.twitter.com/TDylUGasWK
— Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) December 22, 2025
The Golden Fleet is the Navy’s “bold investment to revitalize America’s maritime industrial base,” according to the initiative’s newly launched website.
“America’s next battleship, the USS Defiant, will be part of a new class of large surface combatants with the most destructive fire power of any surface ship to ever sail — having the ability to strike an adversary at 80x the range of the previous class,” the website states. “The Trump-class Battleship will be the first-ever guided missile battleship with the ability to deploy with nuclear and hypersonic missiles.”
Photo: U.S. Navy
The USS Defiant is expected to take 2.5 years to build and is projected to measure 840 to 880 feet long, with a beam of 105 to 115 feet and a draft of 24 to 30 feet, displacing over 30,000 to 40,000 tons. The ship is designed to reach speeds greater than 30 knots and will accommodate 650 to 850 crew members.
While two ships will begin to be built immediately, Trump said the planned class size for the fleet is 20 to 25 ships.
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According to the Military Times, a Government Accountability Office report detailed two decades of poor performance at U.S. shipyards, citing low production, significant schedule delays, and issues with faulty functionality.
Trump said the new ships will be built with steel in modernized American shipyards, creating thousands of jobs, and that he will personally weigh in on the design as a “very aesthetic person.”
President Trump says he is going to help design the new U.S. Navy Battleships because he is “a very aesthetic person.” pic.twitter.com/K78rteOSMp
— Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) December 22, 2025
“The US Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me because I’m a very aesthetic person alongside our partners in American industry,” Trump said. “The construction will create thousands of American jobs.”
Trump said the new fleet will be a restoration of American naval power, pointing to the great ships of the past, including President Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet to the USS Missouri, which played an important role in WWII, including hosting the Japanese surrender.
“America’s battleships have always been unmistakable symbols of national power,” Trump said. “We stopped making them for whatever reason, I don’t know.”
Trump added that 15 submarines are under construction and he plans to order more warships to join the Golden Fleet, including destroyers and a new class of aircraft carriers.
“This is American industrial power returning,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Generations of Americans will be grateful for it.”
The USS Missouri, built in 1944, was the last U.S. battleship to enter service and remained active until its decommissioning in 1992. It is now a museum ship at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The Golden Fleet (U.S. Navy)
Battleships were largely abandoned after WWII as aircraft came to increasingly dominate naval warfare. These slow, heavily armored ships were designed to fight other vessels, making them easy targets for air attacks — a weakness made clear at Pearl Harbor, where the USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma, USS California, and USS West Virginia were sunk in 1941.
In the decades since, aircraft carriers, submarines, and missile-armed warships have replaced battleships in the U.S. Navy.
Secretary of the Navy John Phelan said the Trump-class battleships will be essential to the Navy, will have the most modern weapons systems, and serve as a flagship for commanders to oversee naval forces far out at sea.
“Not only is the president’s idea a good one, it’s something the Navy desperately needs and now has a formal requirement for,” he said. “The future Trump-class battleship the USS Defiant will be the largest, deadliest, and most versatile and best-looking warship anywhere on the world’s oceans.”
Specifications for the Trump-class Battleships. (U.S. Navy)
He added that the ships will give the United States a “new leg” in nuclear deterrence for the “first time in generations” because the battleships will carry the nuclear armed sea-launched cruise missile.
“We are going to make battleships great again,” Phelan said. “The USS Defiant battleship will inspire awe and reverence for the American flag whenever it pulls into a foreign port.”
The battleship announcement comes as the Navy expands its fleet with a new class of smaller, agile warships. The FF(X) small surface combatant, based on the U.S. Coast Guard’s Legend-class, will be a highly-adaptable vessel, with the first ship expected to enter service in 2028.
