CBO: Trump-Class Battleship Program Costs $275B; First Hull Hits $23.4B
At $23.4 billion for the lead ship, the Trump-class costs 76 percent more per unit than a Gerald R. Ford carrier ($13.3B) and absorbs the equivalent of 1.3 Ford-class vessels from a shipbuilding budget that is already rationing tonnage.
The subsequent 14 ships at $18 billion each imply a 23 percent learning-curve discount—aggressive given that the DDG-51 and Zumwalt programs both overran. If the learning curve flatlines and ships 2-15 approach lead-ship costs, the program balloons past $350 billion, forcing a choice between battleship quantity and the DDG-51 sustainment rate that INDOPACOM has called non-negotiable for Strait of Malacca escort rotations.
The Navy plans to build one battleship every other year from 2028 to 2056 while maintaining two DDG-51 destroyers annually—a production cadence that requires shipyards to increase large-surface-combatant tonnage by 12 percent above 2025 baseline by 2035.
The GAO documented in March that U.S. shipyards have consistently underdelivered on cost and schedule for two decades; this program commits $275 billion to the exact industrial base that has operated in 'perpetual state of triage.' Watch the FY27 supplemental markup in September—if Congress funds the lead ship LRIP without addressing the GAO's shipyard capacity constraints, the program will absorb resources from DDG-51 production or force a third-shift ramp that neither Newport News nor Bath Iron Works has demonstrated.
Has the Navy stress-tested the battleship build rate against actual shipyard throughput, or does the 2028 start date assume capacity improvements the GAO says have not materialized?
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