A poster displayed at the event at Trump’s gilded Mar-a-Lago estate showed an artist’s rendering of a sleek warship dubbed the USS Defiant, slicing through choppy seas as a laser beam fired from its deck and smoke rose from a distant target.
Beside the ship sat an image of Trump raising his fist — closely echoing the defiant pose he struck minutes after surviving an assassination attempt in 2024. Another poster depicted the vessel passing the Statue of Liberty.
“Some of them have gotten old and tired and obsolete, and we’re going to go the exact opposite direction,” Trump said. “The US navy will lead the design of these ships alongside me because I’m a very aesthetic person.”
The Navy is also pursuing a new frigate based on the Legend-class cutter as it works to reinforce a surface combatant fleet it says is roughly one-third the size it needs, an effort announced Dec. 19. The ship, dubbed the FF(X), will be built by Newport News, Virginia-based HII.
The proposed vessels are part of Trump’s “Golden Fleet” push to revive US shipbuilding and address shortages in smaller ships as the US seeks to compete with China, where roughly 53% of global shipbuilding occurs. The US builds just 0.1% of the world’s ships, according to a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies assessment.
The US has not built a battleship since the 1940s, opting instead for aircraft carriers, destroyers and other missile-equipped ships designed for long-range strikes rather than big-gun warfare. Trump said the Navy would begin with two and ultimately aim for as many as 25.
Even so, production could remain a distant prospect. Trump’s earlier attempt to launch a new frigate during his previous term ended in major delays and cost overruns. The original plan called for 20 vessels, but escalating expenses and production setbacks sharply reduced the program’s ambitions.
Trump has already attached his name to another weapons system, the F-47 stealth — a reference to his status as the 47th president. He has also backed renaming and branding efforts involving the newly anointed Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, as well as the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.
“What I’ve learned is that not only is the President’s idea a good one, it’s something that Navy desperately needs and now has a formal requirement for,” Navy Secretary John Phelan said at Mar-a-Lago. “The future Trump-class battleship, USS Defiant, will be the largest, deadliest and most versatile and best looking warship anywhere on the world’s oceans.”
The broader backdrop is a US shipbuilding sector that lags far behind China’s pace. The Trump administration has made narrowing that gap a priority, including investing in domestic capacity and creating a new Office of Shipbuilding earlier this year, alongside plans for tax incentives intended to attract companies to the US.
One defense analyst said the announcement also reflects a tactical effort by the Navy to leverage the administration’s momentum.
“The presidential announcement signifies ‘the Navy is trying to tap into the enthusiasm of the administration for shipbuilding and say, “OK, you want to build ships — let’s come up with some new ships to build because you’re going to if you have money and energy, let’s apply that toward things that the Navy needs,”’” Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said in an interview.
If the project advances, the Trump-class ship would be positioned as a successor to Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which still have roughly four decades of service life remaining and are equipped with Aegis Combat Systems that provide missile-defense capability.
