All the President’s Ships

By John R. Puri

Tuesday, December 23, 2025

 

President Trump announced yesterday that the Navy would be fielding a new “Trump-class” battleship as the centerpiece of his planned “Golden Fleet.” Set aside those silly names, which obviously serve Trump’s insatiable hubris. Behind them is the most momentous effort to modernize the U.S. Navy’s aging force structure in decades.

 

The surest way to get a good policy idea by the president is to let him name it. (Call missile defense “Golden Dome,” for instance. Can we get a “Golden Anti-Electromagnetic Pulse System” next?) Trump’s “Golden Fleet” plan is, in fact, made up of ideas that have long been popular among military wonks in conservative policy circles. The crux of the proposal is that, in an era of great-power competition spanning multiple theaters, the Navy requires a more nimble fleet consisting of ships that are greater in number, quicker and cheaper to produce, and easier to replace in wartime.

 

That sounds so intuitive as to be mundane. But, since the end of the Cold War, Navy planners have demanded that nearly every warship be loaded with advanced capabilities and weapon systems to make each one a floating fortress. Every new class of ship had to be the best there ever was. Naturally, this emphasis came at the expense of quantity, program cost, and procurement speed.

 

It wasn’t a terrible strategy for the first couple of decades after the Soviet Union fell. Expectations for the Navy shifted from preparing for all-out warfare against a peer competitor to patrolling global waters as a sort of police force, designed to secure the commons. Ships with advanced missile systems proved useful for launching precision strikes in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya from hundreds of miles away. Maritime security came to mean interdiction and anti-piracy — not battling the warships of other nations.

 

Today, however, the Navy’s principal objective is to deter, and prepare for, a war with China, most likely in the Taiwan Strait. And the Navy is not equipped to deal with an adversary with submarines and anti-ship ballistic missiles. The United States hasn’t lost a vessel to combat since World War II, but war games predict that China could sink dozens of warships, including two aircraft carriers, within the first three weeks of fighting over Taiwan.

 

The Navy’s modern ships are built to last until they retire, not to be quickly replaced after being destroyed. The Navy can’t seem to build anything quickly or cheaply. A perfect example is the Constellation-class frigate, which the Navy spent $2 billion on before canceling the program earlier this year. It expects to receive just two completed ships. The original idea behind fielding a frigate, which the Navy hasn’t had for ten years, was to have a set of agile, cost-effective ships to complement — not replace — the branch’s larger, more advanced vessels. Yet officials imposed ever-changing design modifications anyway, to fortify the frigates, pushing back construction timelines by years. The Constellation class was initially supposed to be 85 percent similar to another frigate the builder had already made for European navies. It ended up having just 15 percent in common.

 

The failure of the Constellation was ultimately beneficial, however, as it prompted the Trump administration to fundamentally alter its ship-buying approach. In early December, the president approved the plan he had termed his “Golden Fleet,” spearheaded by Navy Secretary John Phelan. The initiative was to include the introduction of a new class of large surface combatant as well as 49 support ships, including transport vessels and fuel tankers. Programs would be stripped of redundant systems and specifications, allowing different types of ships to serve different, complementary roles. The overarching purpose of the “Golden Fleet” is to expand the nation’s shipbuilding capacity as rapidly as possible, an objective the Navy can no longer afford to subordinate.

 

Perhaps the best plan to revitalize the U.S. Navy ever written was published by the Heritage Foundation, a former think tank, in 2021. (The author, Brent Sadler, remains a very serious thinker.) It called for the creation of several classes of smaller vessels to enable a forward-deployed fleet that could patrol numerous vital theaters at once. Secretary Phelan’s initiative finally begins to follow this overdue plan in both spirit and detail.

 

Renderings of the Trump-class USS Defiant displayed as President Donald Trump makes an announcement about the Navy’s “Golden Fleet” at Mar-a-lago in Palm Beach, Fla., December 22, 2025. (Jessica Koscielniak/Reuters)

 

The first Navy ship announced for the “Golden Fleet” is a new frigate meant to replace the Constellation class. It will be built by Huntington Ingalls and modeled after the Legend-class National Security Cutter, which the company already constructs for the U.S. Coast Guard. Phelan says he wants the first ship in the water by 2028. That will be achievable so long as he prevents his officers from killing the program with additions. To make deliveries on time, keep it simple. The Heritage plan envisioned the first next-generation frigate to arrive by 2031, so the Navy is ahead of schedule.

 

What the president calls his “Trump-class” battleship is actually a rebrand of the next-generation guided-missile destroyer that the Navy has planned for years, intended to gradually replace its workhorse Arleigh Burke–class destroyers. These will be the larger, more advanced warships whose missions the new frigates will support. Heritage penciled in the first next-gen destroyer’s completion for 2030. Get moving.

 

Trump also announced a new class of aircraft carrier, though he hasn’t yet offered details. If he needs ideas, the Heritage plan proposed two smaller classes beyond the eleven hulking carriers we already have: a nuclear-powered escort aircraft carrier and an anti-submarine warfare support carrier. Either would cost far less than the $13 billion apiece Gerald R. Ford class that the Navy is building now.

 

My advice to deter and, if necessary, win a war against China? Build as many ships as the Navy’s budget will allow — and request a larger budget next year to buy even more ships. Build frigates, build destroyers, build carriers, build logistics ships, build submarines, build amphibious warships. Build large and small surface combatants. Build both manned and unmanned vessels. Build them in America, and build them in allied countries (like Japan and South Korea) that can do it more cheaply and quickly than we can. Build ships like crazy, as the Chinese government is already doing.

 

If the Navy can do that, I frankly couldn’t care less what Trump calls it.