New defense budget torpedoes Trump-class battleship

On Tuesday, the House Armed Services Committee released the draft of its annual defense policy bill ahead of the panel’s marathon National Defense Authorization Act markup next week, and Punchbowl News defense reporter Briana Reilly has revealed that the $1.15 trillion proposal explicitly bans the construction of the president’s requested Trump-class battleship.

President Donald Trump announced plans to construct the new battleship class in December, which he said would be “the fastest, the biggest and by far — 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.” While his initial plan was to build two ships, eventually he wanted to expand that number to as many as 25, which he said would be called “the Golden Fleet.”

But Trump’s vision has been criticized by experts inside government and out. Some suggest that the cost is too high. Others note that warfare has changed dramatically since the battleship reigned supreme, and that modern conflict calls for inexpensive drones rather than enormous ships. And others still point out that much of the technology proposed for arming the ships simply doesn’t exist.

As military expert Max Boot recently explained, “There is a good reason why the Navy hasn’t built a battleship since 1944: These massive surface vessels were already an anachronism in the days of propeller-driven airplanes and dumb bombs. They are all the more outdated at a time when they would be easily detected by satellite surveillance and become a fat target for drones, submarines, jet aircraft and all kinds of missiles.”

What’s more, “the plans call for the inclusion of weapons that don’t even exist yet.”

And it is for this very reason that the proposed budget bars construction of the ship until the Navy certifies it has met "sufficiently mature technology readiness level."

This is, in fact, precisely what Book had recommended, writing, “The defense budget should be tailored to the nation’s security needs, not to the president’s insatiable ego.”

In December 2025, President Trump proposed building a new Trump-class battleship, describing it as "the fastest, the biggest and by far—100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built."

Trump's battleship proposal reflects a broader pattern of the administration prioritizing costly, technologically ambitious military projects over practical defense needs.

Military strategists argue that modern naval warfare relies on smaller, faster vessels and unmanned systems rather than massive surface ships vulnerable to contemporary weapons.

The Navy's current modernization strategy emphasizes distributed operations and advanced technology integration—approaches fundamentally incompatible with battleship doctrine. Congressional skepticism of the Trump-class battleship also stems from budget constraints and competing defense priorities. The House Armed Services Committee's certification requirement effectively establishes a practical barrier to the project's advancement, allowing defense planners to redirect resources toward capabilities aligned with contemporary strategic challenges and fiscal realities.

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