The Trump administration’s plan for the US Navy to build its largest battleships since World War II comes with a whopping price tag of $275 billion, and US shipyards may not have the capacity to build them, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office says.
Each of the 15 nuclear-powered surface combatants will cost more than $18 billion, putting them in the range of the Navy’s Ford-class supercarriers, to date the most expensive naval vessels ever built.
The huge cost of the battleships, dubbed the “Trump-class,” is driving the Navy’s total procurement budget for surface combatants, which also include destroyers and frigates, to increase by more than two-thirds – from $11 billion in 2025 to $18 billion in 2027, the CBO report says.
The administration announced the battleships last December, with the president saying they would be fitted with “guns and missiles at the highest level,” hypersonic weapons, electric rail guns, cruise missiles and the “most sophisticated lasers in the world.”
Subsequently, the Navy has said the battleships would carry nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, making them the most powerful vessels in the US arsenal after its ballistic-missile submarines.
